8 Great Spring Hikes in the Lower Mainland

/ Maria / Leave a comment

Growing up in Newfoundland, I never really liked Spring because it’s barely a season there (pretty sure we just get a second winter). But Spring in the Lower Mainland is fantastic! It actually warms up when it’s supposed to and pretty much the entire city has been in bloom this April. But as much as I love it, it also kills me a little bit because even though it warms up so much in the city, it still takes a long time for all the snow in the mountains to melt. Proper hiking season doesn’t really start until late June, early July, but there are lots of lower elevation hikes that you can do in the Spring that are located right in our backyard! Here’s a few of my favourite Spring hikes to tide you over to those warmer summer days:

Baden Powell Trail

The Baden Powell Trail is a whopping 42km long trail that runs all the way from Deep Cove to Horseshoe Bay. But don’t be intimidated by the length, the entire trail can be done in a series of day hikes, they’re just best done with two cars (one at the start and one at the end) so that you don’t have to backtrack. The four main trail sections include Deep Cove to Lynn Canyon, Lynn Canyon to Grouse Mountain base or Cleveland Dam, Cleveland Dam to Cypress parking lot, and Cypress to Horseshoe Bay. I’ll admit that I’ve only actually done the Deep Cove to Lynn Canyon section, but I’m hoping to hike a few more sections! I believe the more popular sections are between Deep Cove and Grouse, because there is significant elevation gain between the Cypress Mountain sections. Either way, there’s a lot to explore on this forested trail! Fun fact, the trail is named after Lord and Lady Baden-Powell, the founders of Girl Guides and Boy Scouts!

Big Cedar and Kennedy Falls Trail

This is a great trail located in North Vancouver that hikes through the forest to 2 main attractions, a really big cedar tree and Kennedy Falls. The hike is 10km long, with approximately 150 metres in elevation gain. We thought it would be a pretty quick hike with such limited elevation gain, but there is a lot of up and down through the woods, so the cumulative elevation gain is greater. It’s also a more technical trail than I was expecting, so if you’re looking for an easy walk in the woods, this isn’t the one for you. However, if you’re looking to warm up those legs in preparation for the summer hiking season, this is the perfect hike! There is a lot of spray coming off Kennedy Falls with the Spring run-off, so bring a rain jacket if you want to get close for photos. The trail is dog friendly, but small dogs might struggle with all the trees and roots across the trail.

Jug Island Trail

If you don’t want to travel to the North Shore, there’s some great hikes available in Belcarra Regional Park, located just past Anmore. Jug Island Trail is one of my personal favourites because it’s a short hike, but a good warm up. It’s only 5.5km long and has about 100 metres in elevation gain (it’s listed as having none, but that’s because it starts and ends at sea level). It’s a mostly forested hike, but there is a nice view about midway through the trail looking down at the backside of the peninsula, as well as a beautiful view of Jug Island and Indian Arm at the end of the trail. The beach at the end of the trail is also accessible by kayak from Deep Cove or Cates Park if you’re up for a boating adventure! This is the only trail I’ve done, but there are other short trails in the area such as Admiralty Point and Sasamat Lake.

Lower Seymour Conservation Reserve

The Lower Seymour Conservation Reserve is located between Grouse and Seymour and protects the ecosystem running up towards Seymour Lake, one of Metro Vancouver’s 3 water supply lakes. I worked in this area for about 8 months, so I had lots of time to explore some of the trails and there’s a ton of options to choose from! They’re all pretty similar in that they’re mostly forested trails (common theme for Spring hikes as it’s too early to get up in the mountains). Parking is available just off the end of Lillooet Road at the Rice Lake Gate, at the Lynn Canyon Ecology Centre, or off of Rice Lake Road at the entrance to Lynn Headwaters Regional Park. I’d personally recommend avoiding the Ecology Centre as it draws a lot of tourists for the suspension bridge, it’s only about 1km hike to the bridge from the other entrances if you still want to visit. Some of my preferred trails include Fisherman’s Trail (13km), which hikes up to a viewpoint overlooking the River, and Rice Lake (3km), which is great for fishing (if you’re into that). I also like the Lynn Headwaters Trail (6km), which follows Lynn Creek and can be extended to hike to Norvan Falls (14km). The falls are definitely best explored in the Spring when run-off is high, by Fall, the falls are just a trickle!

Lighthouse Park

I know, I know, all the locals are already super familiar with Lighthouse Park, but as an East Coaster I only visited the park for the first time last year! This is the place to go if you’re after ocean views! There’s still a ton of forested trails here, but they pop in and out of the woods along the coastline. I think of Lighthouse Park as a bit of a build-your-own-adventure trail because there’s tons of trails running through the park and you can pick which circuit you want to do. When I visited, we mostly followed the coastline, making a bit of a loop from the parking lot. There’s limited elevation gain in this park, but lots of great views!

Golden Ears Park

I’m a huge fan of Golden Ears Park. It gets crazy busy in the summer though, which is why Spring is great time to visit! Don’t even think about doing Golden Ears Peak, it’s way too early for that, but there are some nice trails located at the back of the park. Drive to the far end of Alouette Lake and park in the North Beach Campground lot (do not actually go into the campground, parking is not permitted there). There’s two trails, the Lower Falls Trail and the East Canyon Trail to Viewpoint Beach. At 5.5km, the Falls Trails is really more of a walk, but affords some nice views of the mountains from the river and a nice waterfall at the end of the trail. The trail to Viewpoint Beach is a little longer at 8km, and has a great view looking up at the mountains from the beach at the end. There’s about 200m elevation gain on the viewpoint beach trail and none on the falls trail. On maps, it looks like you can connect between these two trails, but I’ve done these hikes several times and I’ve never been able to find where the two connect.

Capilano Regional Park

This is another park I’ve explored as part of my work and it is a great urban trail in North Vancouver. If you’re feeling ambitious, you can hike all the way from Ambleside Park up to Cleveland Dam (~14km), but you can also access the trail from Cleveland Dam or from some of the local roads on the West side of the Park. The engineer in me loves Cleveland Dam and there’s a great view of the Lions looking out over Capilano Lake (another one of Metro Vancouver’s drinking water supply lakes). You can drive right up to the lake, but I’d recommend starting somewhere lower on the trail and making the dam and lake your lunch break in the middle of the hike. I like this trail because there’s tons of neat bridges to cross over with great views of the Capilano River and canyon. You can also stop in and visit the fish hatchery along the way!

Burnaby Mountain and Barnett Trail

There’s tons of great Spring trails located around Burnaby Mountain and it’s easy to take transit to them! I’ve personally done the Burnaby Mountain Summit Trail, which loops around the top of the mountain, and the Barnett Trail, which loops around the back of the mountain. The best views are probably from Burnaby Mountain Park. Both of the trails overlap each other and I would definitely consider them urban trails as they loop in around the SFU campus and the bike park, but there are a few views looking down over Indian Arm and you do get a nice workout climbing back up the mountain. Both hikes are under 10km.

Snowshoeing Artist Point

/ Maria / 4 Comments

The weather has finally started improving over the last few weeks, so I’ve been getting ready to start posting more about Spring and Summer hikes, but I have one last winter-related post to share. After our ski trip to Apex and our snow camping adventure at Keyhole hot spring, I decided it was time to pack away my skis and snowshoes for the season. However, the weather was so nice in mid-march that my friend Lien convinced me to get the snowshoes out for one last spring snowshoe adventure.

Apparently Lien’s exhausted everything within 2 hours driving distance of Vancouver, so he’s started exploring south of the border to get his mountain fix. We’d both seen a few posts throughout the winter of people snowshoeing at Artist Point, near the Mount Baker ski resort, and it looked like it had the most picturesque views, so we decided to check in out. We did our first Washington State hike a few months earlier (before the snow), in late October, and had a blast, so we were optimistic about Artist Point. My sister Emily moved to Vancouver in January of this year, so she decided to join us for the adventure.

You never know how long it’s going to take crossing the border, but we crossed in Abbotsford, so it didn’t take long at all. Artist Point is located right at the Mount Baker ski lodge, so it was about a 2 hour drive in total from my house in New Westminster. Like I said, we’ve only just started exploring the North Cascades region over the past few months, but it is incredibly gorgeous and I expect we’ll be spending more time there in the future!

Artist Point was a little overwhelming at first. Follow the main highway out to Baker and then continue past the first ski lodge up to the second parking lot. Again, continue through this parking lot and you’ll come to another parking lot in the recreation area (outside the paid ski hill). I say it was overwhelming because there were just so many people there! I was expecting it to be busy at the ski resort, but it was just as busy in the rec area. Artist Point is popular among both snowshoers and backcountry skiers as there’s a lot to explore in the area. I’ve never really been interested in backcountry skiing or ski touring because it seems like a lot of work and a bit intimidating. Whenever I’ve seen skiers while snowshoeing, I haven’t thought it looked any more fun than snowshoeing. But Artist Point was one trail where it was sorely tempting to take up backcountry skiing!

The trail is both straightforward and somewhat confusing. I say that because it appears that there are a ton of different trails going in every direction, but most of them end up at the same place, they just take different routes of varying difficulty to get there. The only thing to avoid is to make sure you don’t hike into the big ski bowl at the very beginning. Follow the trail up along the edge of the ski slope and you’ll be fine. It’s marked with boundary markers for the skiers at Baker and you can just follow along the side. Some skiers were skiing in the bowl, but it is higher avalanche risk in there, so if you want to explore, make sure you have your AST training and the proper gear.

Since we had neither of those things, we stuck to the marked trail. The rest of the trail is fairly low avalanche risk, but again, make sure to check the level online before you go hiking. Also, a friendly reminder to always give someone your trip plan, especially if you’re crossing the border. But I would definitely highly recommend the Artist Point Trail! I think it’s actually a great trail for beginners because it’s not very long, only about 6km in total, and the elevation gain is reasonable at about 300m. Plus the payoff for level of effort expended is unbelievable! Even the views hiking up the edge of the ski slope are great, but once you reach the top of the plateau, it’s a 360 degree panoramic view!

I thought we were looking at Baker as we were walking up because it’s where the ski resort is, but I learned on this trip that the Mount Baker ski resort isn’t actually on Mount Baker, it’s on Mount Shuksan. Logically this makes sense because Mount Baker is really too large and inhospitable an environment to have a ski resort, but I guess I never really thought about it before. Once we reached the top of the plateau, I realized we hadn’t been looking at Mount Baker on the way up because Mount Baker was actually located on the other side of the ridge. From the top of Artist Point, you can see the jagged peaks of Shuksan on one side and the flat volcanic top of Baker on the other.

We ate lunch as soon as we hit the ridge because we were pretty hungry and then we did some more exploring afterwards. When you hit the ridge, you’ll be able to see Table Mountain on the right and then another hill on the left. The hill of the left is actually Artist’s Point and this is where I’d recommend exploring. There’s a ton of great views up there and it’s a great place to start your ski back down. There were some people snowshoeing Table Mountain, but it’s a very steep ascent to the top and it has a higher risk of avalanches, so we opted to skip it. In the summer you can actually drive right up to the top of the ridge, so we may have to come back in warmer weather to explore further!

There was a crazy amount of people exploring around Artist Point, but it is a wide open area, so it never felt too crowded. It was busy, but not so crowded on the peaks that you couldn’t get nice photos. I find it’s always hard to know whether or not to wear snowshoes or spikes on heavily crowded trails, but this is one trail where I would recommend snowshoes, even with the heavily packed trail start. Emily and Lien wore snowshoes, but I decided to take the risk of wearing spikes. It made for a much more enjoyable ascent, but when it opens up at the top, snowshoes are definitely better because there’s still a lot of fresh powder up there. I managed with the spikes, but snowshoes would give you a bit more freedom.

Overall we really lucked out on this hike. It was around mid march when we did it and we got clear blue skies. It was about 10 degrees on the mountain but it felt quite hot with he sun constantly bearing down on you. There’s no shade anywhere, so bring sun protection no matter one time of year you go. There wasn’t a lick of wind when we visited, but in different conditions it could be pretty rough up on the ridge with blowing snow. I’m going to have to add it to my list of places I want to snow camp though because there is so much wide open space up there and such amazing views, it would be incredible to sleep up there and get to watch the sun set and rise over the mountains.

Ski Resort Series: Apex

/ Maria / 3 Comments

I’m finally up to date on my ski series and I can write about my latest trip, which I went on in late February, to Apex Mountain resort. I’m super excited to write about this one because it ended up being one of my favourite ski trips! Originally we had planned to visit Revelstoke this year, but there are limited group reservations available on the mountain and we couldn’t find anything big enough for our growing group, so we ended up renting a chalet at Apex instead.

I’ll admit, I’d never heard of Apex and I wasn’t really sure what to expect, but we ended up getting some fantastic conditions along with an amazing condo, making for one of the best trips. I’ve heard Apex called one of BC’s hidden gems of a ski resort because it is one of the lesser known resorts and therefore sees fewer visitors than some of the other resorts. We got really lucky this year though because it snowed all over the province for pretty much 2 weeks before our trip, including the day we drove out there, so we had unbelievable conditions on the mountain! Our first runs on Saturday were some of the best skiing I’ve had in a long time because there was about a foot of undisturbed powder on every run.

For those unfamiliar with the resort, Apex is located about 4.5 hours out of Vancouver in the southern part of BC. We drove through Manning Park and Princeton to get to the mountain and it’s about 30 minutes south of Penticton. Last year we visited Silver Star on the Family Day weekend, and while it was great to make use of the holiday, it was really crowded! So this year we went the weekend after Family Day, so there were barely any crowds on the mountain. I don’t think I ever waited longer than 5-10 minutes to get on a lift and most times there was no wait at all.

Apex is definitely smaller than some of the other mountains we’ve visited, but it had a really nice variety of runs. It only has 2 lifts, but like I said, it never felt crowded. We started our day on the far side of the mountain on Stocks Chair, which is a 3-person lift. It’s not a very fast lift, but we spent most of our first morning there because it has a lot of really nice blue runs, great for getting warmed up. Then in the afternoon we switched over to the main chair, which is a high speed quad chair. Many of the runs on the main lift are blacks, so we mostly stuck to the blue runs on the first day.

On the second day I got a little more adventurous and spent the whole day with my sister, Emily, who just recently moved to BC. We slowly worked our way through a good portion of the blacks. I find the black diamond runs at Whistler to be pretty intimidating, but I like trying out the black runs at smaller mountains and working on improving my skills. We started with some of the shorter black runs and slowly worked our way up. Plus, it was a great time to try some tougher runs since the snow conditions were so good! Some of the runs got a bit chewed up over two days, but it was surprising how many still had some really nice powder on them! My only complaint about the mountain would be that they need to update their map because there are a lot of runs on the mountain that aren’t actually showing on the map right now and it made it a bit confusing trying to figure out where you are.

As usual, we ate all our meals in our condo. This was our 4th trip and 3 out of 4 of the trips we’ve had ski-out access. We had ski-out access at this place too, which makes for a really nice experience when you can come back to the warm condo at lunch to eat and have a beer. As usual, I cooked traditional Newfoundland Jiggs Dinner on the first evening and Brandon cooked hotpot on our second evening. Carolyn and Seth made some lasagnas and chili for lunches, which we paired with leftover turkey sandwiches. Finally, Karen cooked us the most wonderful hot breakfast every morning!

We found our condo on Airbnb and we definitely paid a pretty penny for it, but it was one of my favourite places we’ve stayed. There were 15 of us staying there in total and we had a great view of the hill and a nice balcony with a hot tub.

While we didn’t spend much time in Apex Village, we did discover the most precious gem hidden in the trees! Apex has an adventure skating loop that runs through the woods for ~1km. I’m so pleased that we actually did it – I saw it on a facebook post a few months ago and tagged everyone in it because it looked so quaint. You always see those kinds of cool things on social media, but you almost never go, so I was thrilled that we actually got the chance to go to this one. A few of us brought skates with us and everyone else was able to rent them in the village. The loop is really nicely done and only costs $4, although it happened to be free on the day we visited! Speaking of costs, the lift pass at Apex is also incredibly reasonably priced. I believe it’s about $85 a day, but you can buy passes in advance at Costco for just $65!

The amazing ski conditions, small crowds, and awesome accommodations all combined to make this one of my favourite ski trips.

apex map