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!

West Coast Trail: Pachena Bay to Darling River

August 1, 2026August 18, 2026 / Maria / 3 Comments

When I first moved to Vancouver in 2014, I was asked what I was most looking forward to doing and I said the West Coast Trail. I didn’t know anything about the trail at the time. Newfoundland has the East Coast Trail, which is over 300km of coastal hiking that runs along the edge of the avalon peninsula. The trail runs from community to community and the entire thing can be completed as day hikes, with the longest section being ~23km. I thought the West Coast Trail was like the East Coast Trail and I was keen to explore a few sections.

I quickly learned how wrong I was. The West Coast Trail is a 75km coastal hike on Vancouver Island, but unlike the East Coast Trail, it is mostly done in one shot. There is one exit near the mid-point of the trail, but it is a multi-day hiking objective that draws visitors from all over the world. It’s one of the most well known trails in British Columbia and often recognized on world class hiking lists. I hadn’t backpacked at all in 2014 and so I quickly removed the West Coast Trail from my bucket list in favour of some more achievable day hikes. However, when I started backpacking in 2016, I still wasn’t keen on re-adding it to my list.

Because of it’s popularity, it’s a very regulated trail. Everyone on the trail must have a valid permit and the permits sell out very quickly. I started hearing about some other alternatives to the West Coast Trail, and I decided to tackle those instead. The Juan de Fuca Marine Trail is 47km of coastal hiking immediately south of the West Coast Trail. It’s often known as the West Coast Trail Lite and because it doesn’t require permits, a lot of people hike this trail first. I did the Juan de Fuca Trail with Emily in 2017 and I found it so challenging that I was further deterred from completing the West Coast Trail.

Coastal hikes on Vancouver Island are particularly challenging. The coast is often rainy and foggy, which results in a lot of muddy sections through the forest. While there is a lot of beach walking, it’s not possible to stick to the coast all the time, and the trails usually feature challenging muddy detours up and down through the forest. Even when beach walking is possible, it provides its own set of obstacles as walking for hours on cobble, dry sand, or rocky boulders can be very tiring.

As I became a more confident hiker, I decided to hike the Cape Scott and North Coast Trails in 2020. Together, they are similar in length to the West Coast Trail and the North Coast Trail has a reputation for being particularly challenging. Even though I felt more equipped than when I had hiked the Juan de Fuca Trail, the North Coast Trail still proved to be extremely challenging. We completed the trail over 6 days, which was pretty ambitious and we were all exhausted by the end. At times, it can be hard to hike faster than 1km every 45 minutes, which makes for very long days.

After that experience, I turned my attention from the West Coast Trail entirely. I guess because it was so regulated, I figured it was better to do the less popular trails first. The trail wasn’t going anywhere and I didn’t feel in a rush to complete it. Until 2026, when the urge finally struck. I’m not sure why this year over any other year, but as I was making my plans for the summer in early 2026, I suddenly became very aware of the fact that I’ve lived in BC for more than 12 years and still hadn’t completed this iconic trail. I take great pride in this blog and it’s been doing well over the past 2 years. It started to feel like a real gap that I haven’t covered this trail on the blog, and so I decided that this was the year, I was finally going to hike the trail.

I initially debated solo hiking and seeing if I could fast-pack it, but I quickly abandoned the idea. Why rush through one of BC’s most famous hikes? Instead, I decided I wanted to enjoy the experience, and if I was to enjoy it, it would be a lot more fun with a friend. So I invited Adriana to join me, who was also very enthusiastic about hiking the trail. Amazingly, when permits released, she found herself #59 in the queue, which I’ve never heard of, so we got all our preferred dates and direction for permits with no issues. We decided to take advantage of the Canada Day stat holiday and complete the trail in late June / early July.

Now that I’ve covered that fun piece of story telling, let’s actually talk about the West Coast Trail. In short, it’s a logistical nightmare. Actually, that may be unfair, Parks Canada does take care of a lot of the trail logistics for you. There are two boat rides required on the trail, both of which have fees, but they are both included in your permit, so you don’t have to deal with it directly. What’s not included is transportation between trailheads and any additional camping fees on either end of the trail. The hike runs from Pachena Bay to Gordon River, with a Parks Canada office on either end where you can check in and out and complete the mandatory orientation. The main decision you have to make before getting your permit is which direction you’d like to hike the trail.

Here’s a few things to consider:
– Parking is free at Pachena Bay, but not at Gordon River (a whopping $20 per day)
– The trail is easier on the north end (Pachena Bay) and gets more challenging towards Gordon River
– The first campsite on the Pachena Bay side is 12km from the trailhead. The first campsite on the Gordon River side is 6km from the trailhead
– Owen Point is one of the longest and most impressive tidal sections. It starts 6km from Gordon River and is 5km long. I really recommend building your trip around ensuring you’ll have a tidal window in which to hike to Owen Point

The final point was really the only one that I considered when choosing my direction. If I started in Gordon River, it would have added a full day to my trip in order to accommodate the trail orientation, boat schedule, and tidal window for Owen Point. For that reason alone, we decided to start in Pachena Bay. But I don’t regret this decision. I liked that we started with the easier half of the trail, allowing us to gain mileage early and get comfortable with the trail as it got harder. It also meant that while we had heavier bags for the longer distance days, we had eaten through a lot of our food by the time we hit the more challenging sections of trail (which honestly took just as long even though our distance was shorter). There are a lot more ladders on the south end of the trail, so I appreciated having a lighter pack for those as well.

I was not happy about the $20 per day parking fee. I wasn’t aware of this when we made the booking. We took the ferry from Tsawassen to Sidney on Saturday morning. The WCT shuttle between the two trailheads only runs once per day in each direction, leaving Gordon River at 9am and Pachena Bay at 1pm. We didn’t have enough time to catch either shuttle on Saturday, so we planned to stay in Gordon River overnight on Saturday, catch the shuttle on Sunday morning, at start from Pachena Bay in the afternoon. This meant we had no option but to pay for parking.

There’s a campground located on either end of the trail as well, so you can plan to stay overnight at either Gordon River or Pachena Bay. I can’t speak to the campground at Pachena Bay, but I didn’t have the best experience at Pacheedaht, which is located in Gordon River. There’s nothing wrong with the sites, but when we encountered some issues, it became evident the campground was not well managed.

The WCT shuttle company is great and I appreciate that they run the shuttle daily, but oh my goodness, the experience was miserable. Nothing personal against the company, it’s just that the road is mostly gravel and I felt sick the entire time. It’s a 4 hour drive between trailheads and the driver is supposed to provide a direct service, but I really appreciated that he gave us a pee break in Lake Cowichan. Definitely bring gravol or something for motion sickness with you on the bus. I felt terrible the entire ride and it was also freezing. But we did see three elk, so that was cool.

We arrived in Pachena Bay at 1pm. It’s an extremely limited site, it has two outhouses and a garbage bin, but nothing else. The trail orientation is scheduled for 2pm, but the park ranger gave it to us at 1:30pm since we were all there. Even so, it was 2:30pm by the time we departed. It was a real mauzy day, not raining, but overcast and a bit cold. The trail starts with a short tidal section across the beach, but we were outside of the tidal window, so we had to start the trail in the forest. This means we were immediately introduced to the ladders.

For those not familiar with the West Coast Trail, it is very well known for its ladders. There are over 100 ladders on the trail and many of them are quite long. I’m not sure why the West Coast Trail developed this way, there are no ladders on either the Juan de Fuca or North Coast Trails, but when they developed the WCT, the decision was made to go up and down over all of the obstacles rather than find routes around them. This means that most of the elevation gain on the trail is done via ladders. We started with 6 or 7 ladders up and over the headland. The ladders were much taller than I was expecting and so I was a little bit nervous on the first few. Going up wasn’t too bad, but going down really freaked me out. Some ladders are missing rungs and when you go down, your feet are exploring the ladder first rather than your hands, which made me feel like I needed to look down to watch my feet. I got more confident on the ladders as time went on, but the first few are definitely a little scary.

It’s 12km from Pachena Bay to the first campsite, which is Michigan Creek. We hadn’t planned out exactly where we wanted to camp every night, but we were keen to see if we could go 14km on Day 1 to get to Darling River Camp. This is because we had a tidal limitation the following morning and it would be easier to time it right if we were a little bit closer to it. But we didn’t want to overdo it, so we decided to make a decision once we got to Michigan Creek.

It was a bit of a slow start to the trail. It took us some time to adjust to the ladders and figure out what to do with our poles. We didn’t want to secure them to our packs at every ladder, but we didn’t want them loose either, for safety reasons. I ended up collapsing mine every time we did a ladder and tucking them into my waist belt so that I could be hands-free and not have them acting as a hazard. Adriana wasn’t feeling great after the bus ride, so we started off with a pretty slow pace, which wasn’t ideal given our late start. The main thing on our side was that it was very close to solstice, so we had a lot of daylight.

Fortunately, our pace picked up a lot after the first few kilometres. It was originally overcast, but it was quite humid and the sun did make an appearance later in the day, so we ended up changing into shorts and t-shirt and we were able to knock out some distance after that. We ended up doing the first 9km in ~3 hours, arriving at Sea Lion Rock around 5:30pm. It’s the first real view on the trail, looking out at the ocean and all the sea lions basking on the large rock shelf. We were both quite hungry and we still had 3-5km to go, so we decided to stop and have our supper. It resulted in an hour-long break, but it was definitely worth it and we left the viewpoint feeling much more energetic.

We finally exited the forest at Michigan Creek Camp, which is the start of the beach walking. There were several people already camping at Michigan Creek and we were still feeling good from supper and happy to arrive at the beach, so we decided to tackle the last two kilometres to Darling River. It was a good choice and we really enjoyed walking along the beach during golden hour. There were a lot of stragglers heading to Michigan Creek from the opposite direction and Darling River ended up being the least busy campsite we stayed at all week, so it was a good choice.

We arrived at Darling River around 8:30pm and I spotted the waterfall that cascades out of the forest and into Darling River before flowing to the ocean. It’s set back from the beach and no one was there, so like I was possessed, I immediately became fixated on the idea of swimming in the waterfall. Adriana was more concerned with getting to camp, so she kept going to find a site across the river, but I put on my sandals and trekked up through the creek to get to the falls. I ended up having a little skinny dip bath in the pool and arrived at camp 30 minutes later feeling incredibly refreshed!

We’d already eaten, so all we had to do was set up camp on the beach. Adriana found a really nice sandy spot and we took care of our nightly chores and then went straight to bed. It was our first of many nights camping on the beach and it felt really restful to hang out in the sand and watch the sunset before heading to bed. It was a much later arrival at camp than I prefer, but considering our late start, I thought it was a pretty successful first day! Tune in next week for Part 2!