Nearer to Nature in British Columbia

It’s appeared in your living room a hundred times, but you probably don’t know its name.

The many faces of Vancouver can be seen frequently on television. Movie makers have found the city and its environs to be a convincing substitute for a wide range of locales--Hong Kong, Seattle, Middle America, South America, China, Vietnam, the south of France and the American West. “Hollywood North” is now third only to Los Angeles and New York in North American TV and film production.

What is attractive to the filmmaker is equally compelling to the walker. Vancouver’s attractions are many and diverse: the city itself spreading over the Burrard Peninsula, its shoreline bordering a Pacific Ocean inlet called the Strait of Georgia, the nearby North Coast Mountains and outlying Fraser Valley farmlands.

“Vancouver is one of the world’s best cities for hiking because the wilderness is right in our backyards,” says Manfred Schollerman, owner-operator of Rockwood Adventures, a walking-tour company. “A 20-minute walk will take you from city streets into a rain forest with 1,000-year-old trees.” Trails weave through an emerald forest of hemlock, red cedar and Douglas fir, over a forest floor of moss, ferns and flowering plants.

From the town’s earliest days, Vancouverites vowed to keep their greenery close by. In 1886, the newly incorporated city’s first resolution allowed purchase of 1,000 acres of wooded peninsula from the Canadian government. Stanley Park, Canada’s largest city park, includes not only cricket pitches and tennis courts but also forests and a rugged coastline.

Although it boasts an urban skyline--a modest collection of high rises--Vancouver’s skyline is really the local mountains. Grouse Mountain, Mt. Seymour and Mt. Hollyburn beckon city-dwellers to climb their eerie heights.

Vancouver’s best walks are on its wild side. The vast wilderness just beyond Vancouver’s suburban sprawl is not the abstraction it is in North American metropolises more cut off from the wild. Wilderness trail heads are located at the end of suburban streets. Just minutes from downtown coffeehouses is a mist-shrouded forest full of mountain lions and bears.

The North Shore Rescue Team, Vancouver volunteers much admired for their efforts to locate hikers lost in the oh-so-close North Shore Mountains, is oftendispatched during the summer hiking season.

Many city-slickers overestimate their back-country skills, experts point out. While this situation exists in parkland around every big city, the problem is more acute in Vancouver because the terrain is so rugged. More than a dozen hikers have perished in the North Shore Mountains during the last five years.Last year, two women got lost on the forested shoulder of Grouse Mountain, while within sight of Vancouver down below. They did what increasing numbers of upscale hikers do: They reached for a cellular phone and called 911.

False Creek: 6.2-mile loop; shorter walks possible.

Vancouver’s False Creek (actually a tidal inlet) was until 1970 little more than a dump, an open sewer. Then came a rapid renaissance. Industrial land on both sides of False Creek was reclaimed for waterfront shopping, dining, walking, living. As False Creek was restored, so was Granville Island, now one of Vancouver’ six major commercial and cultural centers.

Federally bankrolled redevelopment is sometimes an aesthetic disaster, but here they did it right. The False Creek-Granville Island walk is Vancouver’s best urban jaunt. Follow the sea wall and some waterfront streets to visit a maritime museum and a science center.

Granville Island’s Public market features espresso bars, every kind of ethnic fast-food from Greek to Thai to British (fish and chips), as well as flower stalls and fruit and vegetable stands. Slake your thirst with an all-natural unpasteurized beer at Granville Island Brewery, Canada’s first microbrewery, established in 1984.

Ferry service helps you customize a False Creek walk for your time and energy. If sightseeing is your primary objective, start at Granville Island, then walk the sea wall.

If you want a 10K-see-it-all workout, start walking at the mouth of False Creek in Vanier Park. Drop by the flying-saucer-looking H.R. MacMillan Planetarium, the Vancouver Museum (pioneer and native history exhibits) and the Maritime Museum. Follow the sea wall to Granville Bridge and Granville Island, then head east along False Creek. At Cambie Bridge, the sea wall ends and urban hikers detour inland for a few blocks through the last real industrial area. . At the top of False Creek inlet, visit Science World.

Rejoin the shoreline path and head back to the Cambie and Granville bridges. Take the Burrard Bridge back to the shore or board the ferry for the five-minute ride across False Creek.

Access: From the Granville Bridge, follow the signs to Granville Island. To reach Vanier Park from the north, cross Burrard Bridge and turn right on Cypress Street. Follow the signs to Vancouver Museum and Planetarium and its free parking lot.

The Grouse Grind: 1.6 miles one way.

Why ride when you can hike? Sure the year-round Skyride swoops visitors to the top of 1,250-meter Grouse Mountain in just eight minutes.

But then you’d miss the challenge of the 45-degree climb from Grouse Mountain parking lot through beautiful woods to Grouse Mountain Plateau. Reward for the longest 1.6 miles you’ll ever hike are views of the city, Vancouver Island and the Coast Mountains.

The Grouse Grind has become more of a fitness test than a nature trail. Locals measure their times up the mountain in early summer, then compare them with efforts later in the summer.

Hikers usually board a Skyride gondola for the ride down.

Access: From downtown Vancouver, it’s 7.5 miles north over Lion’s Gate Bridge and Capilano Road to the ski lift.

By bus: Board the No. 246 Highland westbound on Georgia Street, then transfer to the No. 232 Grouse at Edgemont and Ridgewood.

Stanley Park’s Sea Wall: 6.5-mile loop.

Vancouver’s sprawling playground has the wide lawns, cricket pitches, picnic areas and military monuments characteristic of a city park, but it’s Stanley Park’s wild side and ocean shore that attract walkers.

When the native Coast Salish occupied the land, it was a rain forest of hemlock, Douglas fir and cedar. Siwash Rock, off Prospect Point, is named for a native father-to-be who believed that a lengthy swim in the bay would cleanse his every sin and, thus, his newborn would start life unblemished. The spirits were evidently so taken by his gesture that they immortalized him in stone. His wife and son were similarly commemorated and are now mainland rocks overlooking Siwash.

Much of the peninsula was logged in the 1860s and later came under the administration of the military. Then, with what now appears to be incredible foresight, the newly incorporated city of Vancouver, population then a mere 1,000, persuaded the federal government to give its military reserve to the city for a park. In 1888 Gov. Gen. Lord Stanley officiated at the dedication of his namesake pleasuring ground.

The Pacific all but encircles Stanley Park, and along the ocean’s edge are sandy beaches and a sea wall that offer a walk to remember. The best walk in Stanley Park and likely the best walk in all of Vancouver is the walk along the park’s sea wall.

From the foot of Georgia Street, you’ll skirt the marina, then join the sea wall, soon traipsing past the Royal Yacht Club and past a causeway leading to Deadman’s Island, a onetime native burial site and now a Naval Reserve facility. You’ll soon pass a reminder of Vancouver’s native inhabitants--the impressive totem poles carved by the Haida in the late 19th century.

At mile-marker 2 is a children’s water playground and Lumbermen’s Arch, and halfway along is the Lion’s Gate Bridge. Rounding Prospect Point, the sea wall curves southwest. On warm summer days you’re sure to spot sunbathing Vancouverites at Third Beach and Second Beach. Side trails lead to Lost Lagoon, where you can improvise a route along the lagoon’s south side back to the trail head or continue along the sea wall and then a signed pedestrian path back to your starting point.

Access: Metered parking is available inside Stanley Park, but if you can avoid driving into the park, particularly on a busy summer weekend, do so.

By bus: Board the #14 Stanley Park/Downtown bus on Pender Street and disembark on Alberni Street.

The park is only a 15-minute walk from downtown. The best entrances for the visitor afoot are Alberni Street or Beach Avenue.

Capilano Canyon: From Ambleside Park to Cleveland Fish Hatchery is 4.7 miles one way.

If you have time for only one adventure on the urban edge, visit Capilano River Regional Park, located between North and West Vancouver. The river, cascading through the middle of the park, has carved a canyon in the granite.

The name Capilano may be familiar because of the famed Capilano Suspension Bridge. The trails on the west side of Capilano Canyon are free and more inspiring. And locals know that if you keep walking there’s an equally charming small wooden bridge over Capilano Canyon that’s free.

Sixteen miles of trail lead through the park. Longest is 4.7-mile Capilano Pacific Trail, which leads from Ambleside Park to Cleveland Dam and the Capilano Fish Hatchery.

This walk begins in West Vancouver, or West Van, the neighborhood bordered by North Shore Mountains and the sea is called.

From the park, the route passes behind the Park Royal Shopping Center, built on land owned by the native Capilano. The route passes under the Trans-Canada Highway, and under a railway bridge to reach the Capilano River mouth.

The path, a onetime logging railway, leads along the river. From a vista point, enjoy grand views of downtown Vancouver, the port’s huge container cargo facilities, freighters and speedboats, as well as Stanley Park and its skyline of totem poles.

Next the path ascends into a forest of tall cedar and hemlock. The trail splits. One branch leads to the Capilano Fish Hatchery, where coho and Chinook salmon, and steelhead trout are reared.

The other trail branch leads to the top of Cleveland Dam, which towers about 300 feet above the Capilano River to the south and forms Capilano Lake to the north. A path leads from the dam down to the fish hatchery.

Access: From Vancouver, drive north over Lions Gate Bridge. Head west on Marine Drive past the Park Royal Shopping Center and turn left into Ambleside Park.

From downtown Vancouver, the No. 250 bus drops you off at Ambleside Park.

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GUIDEBOOK: Roaming Vancouver

Walking tours: Rockwood Adventures leads a rain-forest adventure called the “Capilano River Canyon Walk” daily from 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. The company also offers a “Lighthouse Park Walk” daily from 2 to 6 p.m., as well as more rigorous guided hikes to Lynn Canyon, Cypress Falls and Bowen Island. Free pickup is offered at most downtown hotels. Prices per person including tax are: adults, $27; seniors, $19; 17 or under, $10. Call Rockwood Adventures at (604) 926-7705.

For more information: Tourism Vancouver, Greater Vancouver Convention and Visitors Bureau, Suite 210, Waterfront Centre, 200 Burrard St., Vancouver, Canada V6C 3L6; tel. (604) 682-2222. For British Columbia travel information, tel. (800) 663-6000.