Favourite Hikes in Southwestern BC: Part VI

October 17, 2026October 16, 2026 / Maria / Leave a comment

I’ve lived in BC for over 12 years now. I started ranking my top 10 favourite hikes in the southwest part of the province in Fall 2016 and I have been creating a new list every two years since then. By 2024, I had 5 lists featuring a total of 50 hikes, so I narrowed it down to a special list of my overall top 10 hikes in the last decade. I’d like to continue the trend, so welcome to Part VI of this list, featuring my favourite hikes of the past two years.

10. Pump Peak

I’m surprised it’s taken 12 years for this hike to make the list, but there’s always a shorter hike close to home that never fails to surprise me. Despite hiking to Brockton Peak many times over the years, I only hiked to Pump Peak for the first time in 2026. It’s located very close to Vancouver in Mount Seymour Provincial Park and is a great option for a sunset/sunrise hike, or a short overnight. (8km, 400m gain)

9. Tricouni Berg Lake

Tricouni Berg Lake (not to be confused with Tricouni Lake or Iceberg Lake) is a newly popular hike past Squamish. It only came on my radar pretty recently, but it’s a fun day hike or overnight trip with a huge payoff at the lake. Turn off Highway 99 onto Chance Creek FSR and follow the Chance Mainline (~8.5km) as far as you can go. It’s a gravel road that most vehicles can handle. From there, park and hike up to a beautiful alpine lake nestled under Tricouni Peak. (10km, 500m gain)

8. Brandywine Mountain

Brandywine Meadows made my very first top 10 list in 2016, but having recently hiked closer to the mountain summit, I’m adding the mountain to this list. There are two trailheads for this hike, a lower one accessible by any vehicle, and an upper one accessible by 4×4. I really recommend the upper lot if you’re hiking to Brandywine Peak. This is a beautiful hike through the meadows and up and over the side of the mountain. Some wayfinding is required over the mountain and it is extremely steep, so only recommended for experienced hikers. I haven’t actually summited, but enjoyed hiking up the ridge. (10km, 800m gain)

7. Golden Ears Peak

This is another hike that I can’t believe had to wait 12 years to make my top 10 list. This is a beast of a trail, so despite its close proximity to Vancouver, it took me a long time to finally work up the nerve to hike it. Located in Golden Ears Park, this is an iconic trail that overlooks Pitt Lake and the surrounding mountains. There’s over 1500m of elevation to summit the mountain, so it’s very steep and should only be attempted by experienced hikers. You can complete it as a day hike, or reserve a campsite to spend the night at the scenic Panorama Campsite. (24km, 1600m gain)

6. San Josef Bay / Raft Cove

San Josef Bay and Raft Cove are both located on the far north coast of Vancouver Island in Cape Scott and Raft Cove Provincial Parks. Both hikes require a long drive on gravel road from Port Hardy (65km+), so they are not easy to access, but well worth the drive. Both hikes are short and visit iconic sandy beaches, but San Josef Bay is a fairly straightforward flat hike, while Raft Cove is fairly technical. San Josef Bay has stunning sea stacks that you can visit at low tide, but it has the downside of being much busier than Raft Cove. (San Jo: 6km, 0m gain; Raft Cove: 7km, 100m gain)

5.Windy Pass / Camel Pass (South Chilcotin)

South Chilcotin Provincial Park was featured on both my 2024 list and my overall best hikes list, so I was excited to return to the park in 2025, this time accessing it from Taylor Creek. I spent 3 days hiking and camping in the park, visiting both Windy Pass and Camel Pass. Camel Pass is accessible as a day hike, but you’d need to backpack in order to access Windy Pass. Both are stunning alpine features of the park. (20-40km, significant gain)

4. Trophy Meadows / Moul Falls (Wells Gray)

This is my last double feature, I promise. I know Wells Gray is a bit of a stretch to be considered Southwestern BC (it isn’t), but I always stretch the bounds on this list to pretty much anything east of the Rockies. I couldn’t bear to leave Wells Gray off the list, often known as the waterfall park, it’s incredibly scenic. My favourite waterfall was Moul Falls, which has the special feature of being able to walk behind the waterfall. But I also loved hiking to Trophy Meadows to see the wildflowers, so I had to include both on the list. (Trophy: 6km, 300m gain; Moul: 6km, 150m gain)

3. Cirque Lake

This hike was a surprise contender for the list. I often just scroll around Gaia for the fun of it, looking for interesting trails, which is how I stumbled upon Cirque Lake. It’s a remote lake in the Callaghan Valley, which can only be accessed by driving 10km down a gravel road with water bars, paddling across Callaghan Lake, and then hiking up a steep trail to Cirque Lake. It’s not a long paddle, nor is it a long hike, but added together, it is a bit of effort to get to the lake. Once there, enjoy the gorgeous alpine views. (4km RT paddle; 4km, 250m gain hike)

2. Cathedral Rim Trail

Cathedral Provincial Park is a stunning, some would say spiritual, park south of Princeton. It’s just far enough away from Vancouver that it’s not too busy and the long access into the park restricts visitors. You can’t do this hike as a day trip and I visited as a 4 day backpacking trip. When operating, you can take a shuttle into the core area of the park and complete the beautiful Rim Trail, which features a number of rock monuments, as a day hike. The shuttle wasn’t running when I visited due to a recent forest fire, which is why I needed more time to hike an extra 15km each way in and out of the park. (Rim Trail: 18km, 900m gain)

1. West Coast Trail

I finally hiked the West Coast Trail and it’s not surprising that this lands as my number 1 hike of the last two years. The West Coast Trail is one of the most iconic trails in BC and is famous for a reason. It’s a multi day coastal hike that features roaring waterfalls, pristine beaches, and stunning sea stacks and sea caves. I completed the trail over 7 days and I would only recommend it to experienced hikers. There are over 100 ladders on this trail and it is a very challenging multi-day trek. But if you’re up for the challenge, you will be rewarded! (75km)

Heather Trail Backpacking Trip: Kicking Horse

October 3, 2026September 25, 2026 / Maria / Leave a comment

E.C. Manning Provincial Park is my favourite park in BC, so I’ve written about it a lot. I first day hiked to 3 Brothers Mountain in 2016, after which I backpacked the entire Heather Trail from Blackwall Road to Cayuse Flats. In 2022, I camped for two nights at Buckhorn Campsite with my Girl Guides and in 2026, I returned to spend one night at Kicking Horse Campground with my friends.

These campsites used to be first-come, first-served, but the trail has gotten so popular in the last few years that BC Parks introduced a reservation system. I think this was a good decision, given how crowded it can get, but I do wish they didn’t release all the sites so far in advance. In this case, we did not pre-reserve our campsites, but when another trip got interrupted by wildfires, we were able to snag two sites at Kicking Horse Campground at the last minute.

3 Brothers Mountain is located on the first half of the Heather Trail. Most people only hike as far as 3 Brothers, but if you continue on, you’ll arrive at both Kicking Horse and Nicomen Lake. The trail officially ends at Nicomen Lake, where you can turn around and hike back, or if you have two cars, continue on to Grainger Creek and Cayuse Flats (which is what I did on my 2018 trip). The most popular option for overnight trips is to camp at Buckhorn and day hike to 3 Brothers. There’s an impressive display of wildflowers in late July and early August along this section of the trail.

The trailhead starts at the top of Blackwall Road, so hikers can skip most of the elevation gain in the car. If you just want to see the wildflowers, you can do a short loop hike on the Paintbrush Trail, or you can hike downhill to Buckhorn Camp, followed by a short uphill through the forest to reach some truly breaktaking sub-alpine meadows. Like I said, I first hiked this trail in 2016, but I keep returning every couple of years because it’s just so damn scenic!

On this visit, I hiked with my girlfriends, Adriana and Amy. We arrived at the trailhead in time to eat lunch and then started the 13km hike to Kicking Horse Camp. The first 5km are mostly in the trees, but even in the forest, there are tons of wildflowers to steal your attention. It didn’t take us long to get to Buckhorn Camp, which is a huge site with a gorgeous cooking shelter and lots of tent pads. It is a bit of a slog through the forest after Buckhorn, but it’s quickly forgotten when you reach the meadows.

The rest of the trail boasts fantastic views of the backcountry. You hike through meadow after meadow until you reach the junction for 3 Brothers Peak. The peak is the most challenging part of the hike, with a steep uphill to the ridge, after which you get to meander along the ridgeline to the summit. We opted to skip the summit on the way in, instead continuing all the way to camp, determined to return and hike to the top the following day.

It was my 4th time doing 3 Brothers, but it was only my second time continuing past the junction. In my opinion, some of the most scenic meadows on the trail are between the junction and Kicking Horse. The trail is fairly easy through this section and it was mostly downhill to camp, but it still took us a while to hike because we stopped so frequently for photos. We took a long break in one of the meadows before strolling into camp shortly after 6pm.

Compared to the rest of the hike, the campsite isn’t particularly scenic. The last time I camped there, there were no reservations and I ended up with a pretty terrible overflow campsite, so having the reservation helped a lot. We found a nice tent pad near one of the meadows to settle in for the evening. There is a small view of some of the surrounding mountains, but overall, most of the sites are in the trees. Buckhorn Campsite was definitely recently upgraded, but in my opinion, Kicking Horse could use a facelift. The outhouse was getting very full, but at least there was a bear cache. Unfortunately the water source isn’t great. It’s just a small creek and it gets fairly low in the summer. We were still able to get water, but the creek at Buckhorn is much nicer.

We had a fun evening hanging out and making dinner, but it was very buggy. I find the mosquitoes usually don’t like me that much and if I set up my thermacell they’ll usually leave me alone. But Amy was another case entirely. I’ve never seen someone attract so many mosquitoes as Amy. It felt like the thermacell wasn’t working at all, but whenever Amy would leave, the mosquitoes would too, so I think the lure of her blood was just so compelling that it overpowered the thermacell.

Amy and Adriana shared a tent, leaving me to sleep by myself. Normally I wouldn’t mind, but it did get very cold overnight and I could have used a second body in the tent, but Amy and Adriana were both cold too. When I camped at Kicking Horse overnight in 2018, our water froze, so I don’t think it matters what time of year you visit, it’s always cold there. We did experience a very weird phenomenon while camping here though. Overnight it seemed that all of the sound was reversed around the tents. When someone would get up, we would hear them on the opposite side of the tent to where they actually were. It was kind of freaky and we recently learned that Manning Park is supposedly haunted, so maybe this was related (ooo, spooky!).

We returned to summit 3 Brothers the following day. It was hot, so it was a bit of a slog getting back to the junction as there is limited shade along the trail and several uphill sections on the way back. But saving the summit for Sunday was a good idea. I think a lot of day hikers stay in the frontcountry sites on Friday and Saturday night and it felt much less busy on the trail on Sunday. We dumped a bunch of our gear at the junction to lighten our packs for the climb, but we made sure to take all of our food and smellies with us so as not to attract bears. A lot of people just leave their entire backpack at the junction. Please don’t do this as we don’t want to attract bears to the area.

It’s only ~1km to the summit, but it is steep and exposed, so it was a bit tiring. There’s a little bit of light scrambling through a few sections of rock, but it’s pretty easy and I would say it barely counts as scrambling. We had lunch at the summit, but the enjoyment was interrupted by the mosquitoes. Eventually Amy gave up and started hiking back down the ridge and me and Adriana were able to get a small respite.

The hike out was as enjoyable as the hike in. The sad aspect of the hike was that with the uninterrupted view of the mountains, we could see several wildfires burning nearby. I expected to see water bombers attending to the fires, but unfortunately we didn’t see any. When I got home, I looked up the fires to see where they were and determined that all of the fires that were visible were actually burning across the border in Washington State. At the time, Trump was going on about how Canada needs to control its wildfire smoke, so it was particularly galling to see so many fires being left to burn near the border. This was in mid-July and several of these fires did end up crossing the border where they burned through kilometres of Manning’s forest. It’s been heartbreaking for me to watch, especially since I love this park so much. I feel like I’ve been grieving trees all summer.

We returned to the car in the mid-afternoon and treated ourselves to burgers in Hope before returning home. Unfortunately, we hit the Sunday evening rush back to the city and sat for far too long on Highway 1, but it was always be worth it to explore the little piece of paradise that is the Heather Trail!

Alouette Lake Kayak Trip

September 5, 2026August 21, 2026 / Maria / Leave a comment

It’s been an interesting summer for kayaking. Usually we do a lot of kayaking in the Spring, focusing mostly on day trips, and one multi-night trip before the end of the season. This Spring, we barely did any kayaking aside from a long weekend trip to Pitt Lake. Seth’s been in school, so it’s hard to accommodate his schedule, but I wanted to do a second trip and we opted to visit Alouette Lake in Golden Ears Park in mid-July. I really wanted to rush up to the lake after work on Friday so that we could spend 2 nights on the lake, but Seth had too much school work, so instead, we drove to the lake early on Saturday morning.

Alouette Lake is a well known destination in the lower mainland. It’s located in Golden Ears Provincial Park, one of the easiest to access locations for frontcountry camping. As a result, the lake is always very busy on the weekends. It’s hard to get frontcountry campsites and you need a free day pass just to enter the park. It used to be easier to backcountry camp in the park, but they’ve recently brought in a reservation system for Viewpoint Beach and Panorama Ridge, so now you have to plan in advance if you want to go backpacking.

Fortunately, it’s still easy to plan marine camping. There are several marine campsites located on the lake and they are all first-come-first-serve. You do need a permit to camp there, but they’re available at camping.bcparks.ca for $5 per person, per night, 2 weeks before your trip. I’m not sure how popular the campsites are in mid-summer. Even though we visited in the middle of July, it rained on and off on Saturday morning, likely deterring some people and meaning that it wasn’t busy. There’s not that many campsites and not a lot of room for overflow, so finding a site could be a problem on a nice weekend.

Alouette Lake is one big, long lake, but it almost feels like two lakes because it gets so narrow at the midpoint of the lake that it gives the illusion of two lakes. Even from South Beach, you can see all the way up the lake to what is known as “the narrows”. There are 3 marine campsites on the lake, as well as East Beach Campsite, which I don’t include because it’s located at the south end of the lake and is accessible by vehicle. I believe it has its own booking website, but the other sites are all FCFS.

The first site is called Moyer Creek. It’s located roughly 10km from South Beach, approximately 1km before the narrows. The second site is located in the narrows and is aptly called, The Narrows. The final site is called Alouette River and is located at the very back of the lake, roughly 18km from South Beach. My ideal trip would have been to paddle to Moyer Creek, camp two nights, and day trip to Alouette River in between. But since we only had one night, we just paddled to Moyer Creek.

It can get very windy on Alouette Lake, so I always advise to paddle early. The wind is almost always blowing north, meaning it should be an easy paddle up the lake and a challenging paddle on the way back. We’ve done day trips on the lake a few times, going as far as Gold Creek and North Beach, which is a 5km paddle from South Beach, but we’d never been further. It was raining when we left South Beach at 9am, but the water was relatively calm as we paddled to Gold Creek. We took a snack break at the entrance to Gold Creek before continuing on towards Moyer Creek.

Unfortunately, it was at this point in the trip that the wind picked up, earlier than we expected, and just our luck, it was blowing south. This meant that we had a pretty rough headwind for the last 5km to Moyer Creek. It wasn’t so windy that it was unsafe, but it was windy enough that it wasn’t a comfortable paddle and it required a lot more energy to battle the wind. We put our heads down and paddled hard until we got to the back of the lake.

The campsite is a little bit confusing upon first visit. There’s not really one central place to camp, it’s more a series of small beaches with campsites cut out of the woods. There was only one person camping there when we arrived, so we had first pick of the rest of the campsites and we got a nice spot at the back of a small beach. A lot of the sites are in the trees, so make sure to pull your boat ashore and walk through the woods when looking for a site. There is a more central area where several of the campsites are, but there are more located around the corner if you don’t see any available. The challenge is that, depending where you camp, it may make it difficult to access the outhouse, bear cache, or creek, which are all located around the main area. The bear cache looked brand new.

Fortunately, the rain stopped by the time we arrived at camp, but we set up our tarp and tent and hoped it wouldn’t return. The sun looked like it might try to make an appearance, so we set up on the beach to have lunch and enjoyed a few hours of solitude while the wind blew whitecaps around the middle of the lake. Eventually, a few other groups arrived in canoes, but in total, there were only 4 groups that stayed overnight.

The wind died down in the afternoon, so we decided to go for another paddle while the weather was calm. I’d been on the fence about if we should stay at Moyer Creek or The Narrows, and I wanted to see the other campsite. I picked Moyer Creek because I figured it would have a better view down the lake. We paddled towards the narrows to check out that site and concluded that we made the right choice staying at Moyer Creek. There’s a nice view from the Narrows, but I think that site is more popular among power boaters and day trippers. There was a large group having a BBQ next to their beached motorboat. I’m sure they had a great time, but they were very loud and it wasn’t the vibe Seth and I envisioned for the weekend, so we were glad that we stayed at Moyer Creek.

We paddled through the narrows into the second part of the lake, but it was too far to go to the back of the lake. The clouds cleared and the sun finally made an appearance. The water was dead calm as we paddled, a rarity for mid-afternoon, and with the sun out, it got pretty hot. Eventually we turned around and paddled back to Moyer Creek to go for a swim. The water was cold, but not so cold you couldn’t hang out in it. Alouette Lake is interesting because it’s a reservoir, meaning that at some point, the river valley was flooded. It’s obvious by the many tree trunks either poking out of the water or submerged just below the surface. You need to watch where you paddle, but it made for a fun swim, with lots of tree trunks to stand on.

We went to bed fairly early and the wind picked up again. It made for a noisy night as I could hear the wind blowing through the trees. I got up to pee around 2am and almost had a heart attack when I shined my headlamp around camp to find a stag staring at me from no more than 10 feet away. It definitely gave credence to the phrase “a deer in headlights”, because it did not move and we both stared at each other as I peed on the other side of the campsite. It was a beautiful animal with gorgeous antlers, but a little too close for comfort. I’m glad I saw it though because I heard it blundering around in the woods the rest of the night and if I hadn’t seen it, I definitely would have thought it was a bear.

We got up early the next morning to get ahead of the wind on our way back to South Beach. The forecast was still calling for a south facing wind, but I was skeptical we’d be lucky enough to get a tailwind. I was right to doubt because despite our early rise, it was very windy and it was definitely a north facing wind. This means we had to paddle against a headwind in both directions – just our luck! I was hesitant to go out in the wind because I could see white caps forming towards the middle of the lake, but we decided to try since it was only calling for more wind later.

It was definitely not my favourite paddle. It was choppy the entire way back to Gold Creek. We didn’t encounter too many problems, but it wasn’t enjoyable and it was definitely more effort. We stopped at North Beach for a snack and then powered our way back to South Beach. I always hate paddling back to South Beach because you can see your final destination the entire time, so it feels like it takes forever to get there. It was really busy at South Beach and we had a challenge to land and load our kayaks around all of the people.

So overall, it was a fun, but somewhat challenging trip. It felt too short and I would like to go back in the future to do two nights. The real benefit of the trip is that it’s so close to home and unlike Widgeon Creek, the campground isn’t that busy. It’s a good option for a weekend trip and I think in the future, I may try to visit in the Spring. We had a lot of fun at Pitt Lake in late April, and generally, I think it’s a good time to camp and paddle before it gets really busy in the summer.