Widgeon Creek Paddling Trip

June 8, 2025June 4, 2025 / Maria / 1 Comment

I’ve written about Widgeon Creek in the past when I visited as a day trip with my kayak, but this year I made an overnight trip to stay at the campsite! I only paddled the creek for the first time last year, but it’s quickly becoming one of my favourite paddling locations in the lower mainland. It makes for a great day trip or overnight objective. The campsite is large and hiking to the waterfall is a great side mission!

But let’s start from the top. I did this trip with my Girl Guide unit, and I specifically call it a paddling trip because they all travelled there in canoes! I intended to canoe too, but one girl got sick at the last minute, so I ended up taking my kayak since we had an odd number of people. This was my first time doing a trip like this with the girls and we’re lucky to have a very experienced canoeist Guider in the unit to lead the trip.

While I love my kayak, canoeing does seem a bit more quintessentially Canadian and I was happy to finally learn some canoeing skills. We did two training sessions on Deer Lake before this trip so that the girls could get used to the paddling strokes. Widgeon Creek isn’t a hard objective, but it does require crossing the fast moving Pitt River, and it was important for everyone to feel comfortable and confident paddling. I found canoeing to be a bit harder that kayaking because of the coordination required with your partner. There are more paddling strokes (at least, that’s how it felt) and I initially found in confusing which stroke to use to correctly change direction. But eventually it clicked and I had fun learning a new skill!

If you want to visit Widgeon Creek yourself, you can park at Pitt Lake. The first part of the trip is crossing the Pitt River, after which it’s a 4.5km paddle up the creek to Widgeon Campsite. You can bring your own boat, or once they open for the season, rent right at Pitt Lake. Fortunately, we were able to borrow enough boats for our group, so we were could go a little before rentals opened for the season. We only had a small group of girl guides, but they were enthusiastic and very good spirited!

We started our paddle early in the morning to avoid the wind and arrived at the campsite in time to set up our tents and eat lunch. The paddle takes ~90 minutes and we made one stop at a pullout along the way for a snack. It rained on us pretty consistently, but no one complained and I noticed that the campsite was considerably less busy than on a sunny day. We were the first to arrive and we were only joined by one other group later in the day.

The campsite is fairly large and has lots of bear caches and picnic tables. I imagine it gets busy in the summer, but there are quite a few tent pads and space to spread out. We started by setting up a tarped area to hang out in so that we wouldn’t continue to get wet from the rain. Fortunately, the rain died off after lunch and we opted to hike 6km round trip to Widgeon Falls. It’s a nice trail through the forest that took us around 2 hours, with a snack break to enjoy the view at the falls. Be careful when it’s wet though, the rocks near the waterfall can get very slippery, so we exercised a lot of caution looking for a place to sit have our snack.

There’s no campfires allowed any time of year at Widgeon Creek, so we returned to the campsite to make dinner and play some games instead. In the morning, we got lucky with nicer weather and we were able to pack down the tents in dry weather. We had a nice paddle back to Pitt Lake, but the wind always comes up in the afternoon and it did pick up just before we crossed the Pitt River at 11:30am. The Pitt River can have a fast moving current, especially in the Spring, around freshet, so we planned accordingly by paddling along the edge of the river, upstream of where we wanted to cross, and then crossing to the boat launch. The current did knock us back a little bit while crossing, but everyone made it without too much issue.

Timing is an important consideration for visiting Widgeon. The creek and the Pitt River are tidally influenced, so they can be a bit high in the spring, but get very low in late summer. I’ve heard that sometimes the creek gets so low you have to walk your boat in places. But it is a very manageable location to visit if you plan around the tides. I’ve been 3 times now and always had a great time! Most of the paddling is located in Widgeon Marsh Regional Park, but the campsite itself is in Pinecone Burke Provincial Park. There’s no permits required to camp there and it is free to visit. It’s a great paddling trip close to Vancouver. We had a great time visiting as an overnight trip!

Hiking Starvation Lake

June 1, 2025May 26, 2025 / Maria / Leave a comment

I don’t often write about some of the smaller hikes I do, but there are some really nice, lesser known, short hikes out there that can make for a great adventure in the right conditions. Starvation Lake is one of those trails!

I laughed a bit when I stumbled upon this trail, because the name really doesn’t sell the location. The lake is located not too far out of Squamish, but it’s often overlooked in favour of more ambitious hikes. I stumbled upon it in early July 2024 when I was looking for somewhere to hike that wasn’t still inundated with snow (it was a late snowmelt year).

Starvation Lake is actually a thru-hike trail, measuring ~7km in length. It can be accessed from either Paradise Valley Road or from the Sea to Sky Highway. The lake is located pretty much exactly at the halfway point, so you can choose either end, or park a car on both sides. We opted for the Paradise Valley side of the trail because we didn’t want to park off the highway, but mostly because we also wanted to visit Fergie’s Cafe!

Fergie’s Cafe is a popular brunch restaurant in Squamish. It’s located on Squamish Valley Road, right before the branch to Paradise Valley Road. It’s nestled along the Cheakamus River and serves the best food! They don’t take reservations, so be prepared for a wait. We managed to get a nice outdoor table where Sadie could “chill”, while we enjoyed our meal.

From Fergie’s, you take the branch on to Paradise Valley Road and drive to the end of the road. Eventually the road turns to gravel for about 400m, so you can either park before the gravel section or drive to the end. If you have the appropriate vehicle, you can continue further along the road by the river, but we opted to just enjoy walking it (to Brandon’s dismay). There’s several FCFS rec campsites along the river, which would make a nice place to camp.

It’s ~3-3.5km to the lake along fairly well maintained trail. The trail diverges from the river after a kilometre and you start an uphill hike towards the lake. It’s a bit rocky in places, but it flattens out again in the middle of the trail. There’s a final uphill push through the trees and then you end up at the south end of lake. There are a few pocket beaches on the south side, but it’s a small lake, so I recommend continuing around to the other side. There’s a rec site on the north side and there’s more space to have a bit of a beach day. To be clear, there is no beach, it’s just rock, but there’s more space to set up some chairs and relax for a few hours.

It was a hot day, so our main reason for doing this trail was to laze around at the lake. We ended up spending several hours swimming before heading back down to the car. In my opinion, Starvation Lake is the perfect swimming lake! It’s not very big, so it warms up very quickly. I don’t think it’s glacier fed, which also contributes to it being warmer. It only took me about 10 minutes to swim across the lake, which Brandon also did from his floatie. A few other people stopped by while doing the hike or a bike ride and did a quick dip in the lake, but we were the only ones spending extended time there.

I really liked this hike because it’s easy and a great location for swimming. By committing to a 1 hour hike, we managed to avoid the kind of congestion that you find at swimming holes that are directly accessible by car (like Brohm Lake and Murrin Lake). Generally I do prefer to take advantage of the summer season to do bigger hikes, but if you’re looking for a relaxing lake day, this is a great choice! I really enjoyed the experience.

Kayaking Alouette Lake

May 25, 2025May 9, 2025 / Maria / 1 Comment

Spring is finally here in full and we’ve been taking full advantage of the weather to do lots of kayaking. Spring is usually my best season for paddling because I get distracted by the mountains once the snow melts in late June. We managed to get our kayaks out 4 times before May this year, which is a new record for us. Seth and I have a big kayak trip coming up in a few weeks (stay tuned), so we’ve been doing lots of training.

Generally, we prefer paddling in salt water, but in late April we decided to make a visit to Alouette Lake in Golden Ears Provincial Park before the day pass system came into effect. We’ve paddled Alouette Lake once before, but I’ve never taken the time to write about it. There’s lots of great camping along the shoreline of Alouette, so I’m keen to return in the future for an overnight trip. But on this occasion, we arrived around 9am for a morning paddle.

Honestly, 9am was a bit of a late start time for Alouette. Almost all of the waterbodies in the area get windy starting in the early afternoon. We paddle Indian Arm all the time and it consistently gets choppy around 1pm. Alouette ended up getting windy earlier, around 11:30am, so we did have our work cut out for us on the way back. But I’m getting ahead of myself!

I’m not sure what the proper protocol is for launching kayaks at Alouette Lake. There is a formal boat launch, but it’s tailored to motorcraft that need to be backed down the ramp to the water’s edge. I think some people launch their kayaks from here, but we’ve always just done it from South Beach, around where the canoe rentals are. The beach isn’t too busy in April, so it’s a quieter time to paddle.

The first time we paddled here, we only made it as far as the public beach at Gold Creek Campsite. So our goal for this trip was to paddle all the way to North Beach in order to navigate the boats up Gold Creek. It was overcast in the morning, but the water was pretty calm and we had a nice paddle along the shore. Alouette Lake is dammed and used by BC Hydro, so there are a lot of tree stumps around the lake’s edge from when they impounded the reservoir. It makes for an interesting paddle because some of the stumps still poke out of the water and are absolutely giant! It’s a little sad to imagine the former giants. Make sure you exercise caution while paddling, because many of the stumps are just under the surface of the water and can be hard to see.

It’s ~4km to paddle to the beach at Gold Creek, which is a nice stopping point. If you want somewhere quieter, there are lots of little pocket beaches around the shoreline as well. I’ve only ever paddled up the northwest side of the lake, but I’d like to check out the southeast side some day as well. The water was calm and it didn’t take us too long to get to Gold Creek. We decided not to stop and instead, continued another 2km directly to North Beach. There are campgrounds located at both Gold Creek and North Beach, so those can be quite busy on a nice day.

We stopped at the beach for a snack. I had packed in a delicious donut from my favourite shop in Coquitlam, Doughnut Love, which I really enjoyed. Our main goal in paddling to North Beach was to continue up Gold Creek. There’s a public parking lot near the North Beach Campsite and we frequently visit in the summer. It’s a ~1km walk along Gold Creek to the beach and we’ll often stop and go swimming in the river, which has extremely clear water. Even though I’ve been there lots of times, I’d never paddled up the creek in my kayak and was keen to do so. You can’t go too far up the river before it gets too steep to continue, but it does make for a scenic little paddle and it gave us a nice end destination.

Unfortunately, by the time we left Gold Creek, the wind had picked up and we had to paddle into a pretty healthy headwind. It wasn’t too windy to be out, but it was a workout to paddle the 6km back to South Beach. The waves weren’t bad, but it’s tiring battling into the wind. It was the kind of weather where you just put your head down and paddle rather than getting to enjoy the views. We made a brief stop at a pocket beach on the way back, but were concerned the wind would only get stronger, and decided to hustle back.

The wind dropped a bit the closer we got to South Beach and I’m not sure if it was because the wind came down, or just that it’s less windy at the end of the lake. Either way, we made it back to the beach without incident around 1pm. Like I said, the wind came up earlier than I was expecting, and I’m not sure if that’s typical for Alouette, or just typical for April. The last time we paddled Alouette Lake was in mid summer and we arrived in the afternoon. It wasn’t as windy then, so it might have just be the early season conditions.

Either way, we had a great time exploring around the shoreline and Alouette remains one of my favourite lakes near Vancouver. From mid-May onwards, you do need a day pass to visit on the weekends. These can be obtained from BC Parks, 2 days before your trip, at no cost. But it is a popular park, so make sure you go on the website at 7am when the passes release or you’ll miss the opportunity to visit the park. I hope to return someday to paddle all the way to the end of the lake and take the opportunity to do some lakeside wilderness camping.