Photo: Whistler’s Ziptrek Eco Tours. Photo by John Biehler.
Our goal every Wednesday is to provide you with outdoor excursion ideas for the upcoming weekend. This week our picks span from gentle walks around forested lakes, to dodging waves along Stanley Park’s seawall, to canopying through a “wintery Ewok village” at Whistler’s Ziptrek Eco Tours.
1. Duck Lake: Nearby Powell River is the Duck Lake Protected Area which offers breathtaking views, first-growth forests, and hikes of varying lengths. If you’re lucky, you might even come across some evidence of old abandoned railroads, just like this blogger did when he visited last summer. We consider this one of the Sunshine Coast’s “Great Hikes”.
2. Diving at Whytecliff Park: Just a short drive down the road from Horseshoe Bay is Whytecliff Park – a famous diving site in West Vancouver. This Sunday March 6th, Whites Diving is hosting a Fusion Drysuit Demo Day where you can test dive the latest in exposure suit innovation. The event is suitable (no pun intended!) for both the experienced drysuit divers and the complete drysuit newbies. For all the details regarding this particular event, visit the Whites Diving website, here.
3. Ziptrek Eco Tours: If you’re looking for an adrenaline rush in a stunning location, may we suggest Whistler’s Ziptrek Eco Tours this weekend? We were so taken by the photos on local photographer John Beihler‘s blog post that we started to get goose bumps! John says “the ziplines criss cross the creek and are connected to many wooden platforms in the trees, high above the creek bed. It’s like a wintery Ewok Village!” Read the rest of his blog post here.
4. Buntzen Lake: Just north of Port Moody, about an hour from Vancouver, is Buntzen Lake – an ideal destination if you’re seeking an easy hike this weekend. The Vancouver Trails website says “although the lake is man-made and maintained by BC Hydro, the surrounding area is full of forests, nice beach areas, and many trails for hiking including the Buntzen Lake Trail which loops around the lake.” Bonus is the area is dog-friendly, and you can access it via public transit too. Read the rest of Vancouver Trails’ overview of Buntzen Lake here.
5. Cypress Falls Park: This enchanting rain forest park is a hidden gem located off Hwy 1′s #4 Caulfield exit at the end of Woodgreen Place in West Vancouver. Yes, it can be hiked in the winter months, but be careful as the trails can be at times steep and the wet weather makes it a bit slippery. Saying that, it’s so worth a visit, even now. Local hiking site Club Tread details Cypress Falls’ hikes here, and one of our favourite local bloggers took their pup Mojo on a walk here earlier in January. You can read about their escapade here.
6. Stanley Park’s Seawall: It almost seems cliche to be recommending a walk around Stanley Park’s seawall – perhaps the biggest attraction in all of Vancouver – and free, no less! But when the winds are a-blowin’ the way they have been this week, watching the waves crash into – and up and over – the seawall is a sight to behold. In fact, it’s almost a game of “dodge the wave”! Let’s just hope the winds aren’t too strong to the point of damage – we digress. Randall Strong, the BC blogger on About.com speaks highly of the seawall in the winter on his blog, here. And David and Adrian of local blog Vancouver Life have posted a great photo series of their walk around the seawall in the winter here.
7. Othello Tunnels: Here’s something out of the ordinary. Just outside the town of Hope are a series of abandoned railroad tunnels. These 5 tunnels were carved into the granite mountainside in 1914 and can now be explored by visiting Coquihalla Canyon Provincial Park. Rebecca Bowlwitt aka Miss 604 highly recommends Othello Tunnels as a day-trip destination, as seen in her blog post here. Local photographer Chris Elander calls the natural scenery around Othello Tunnels as “BC at its best” in his photo blog here.
