Famous Parks & Recreation

One of BC's crown jewels, Garibaldi Provincial Park is a volcanic landscape of turquoise glacial lakes, ancient lava flows, and jagged peaks rising above the Sea-to-Sky corridor. The park's iconic destinations — Garibaldi Lake, Black Tusk, and Panorama Ridge — draw hikers from around the world.

Canada's first national park reserve on the Pacific coast protects a stunning stretch of Vancouver Island's wild west coast. Long Beach stretches for 16 km of surf-pounded sand, while the legendary West Coast Trail challenges hikers with 75 km of rugged coastal wilderness.

Known as BC's "Waterfall Park," Wells Grey is a vast wilderness of ancient volcanoes, old-growth forests, and thundering cascades. Helmcken Falls — Canada's fourth-highest waterfall at 141 metres — is the showstopper, but the park's network of lakes and rivers offers world-class paddling and fishing.

Home to the highest peak in the Canadian Rockies at 3,954 metres, Mount Robson Provincial Park is a UNESCO World Heritage Site of staggering scale. The Berg Lake Trail is one of Canada's finest backcountry routes, passing beneath the "Monarch of the Canadian Rockies" with icebergs calving year-round into Berg Lake.

BC's oldest provincial park covers the rugged heart of Vancouver Island with ancient forests, glacial lakes, and peaks rising above 2,000 metres. Della Falls — Canada's highest waterfall at 440 metres — is a bucket-list destination, accessible only by canoe and trail through pristine wilderness.

Tucked into the Selkirk Mountains above Nelson, Kokanee Glacier Park is the Kootenays' best-kept secret. A remnant glacier, turquoise alpine lakes, and a historic 1896 backcountry cabin make this a favourite multi-day destination. Mountain goats, grizzly bears, and wolverines roam the high country.

A remote alpine plateau in the Okanagan Highlands, Cathedral Park sits on the BC–Washington border with a cluster of crystal-clear lakes, bizarre volcanic rock formations, and sweeping views into the North Cascades. The park is home to California bighorn sheep, mule deer, and over 100 bird species.

Just 60 km from Vancouver, Golden Ears is the Lower Mainland's backyard wilderness. Alouette Lake offers some of the best freshwater swimming in BC, while the challenging summit hike to Golden Ears peak rewards with panoramic views from the Cascades to the Gulf Islands. The park hosts over a million visitors annually.

Manning Park is BC's most accessible four-season wilderness destination, just two hours from Vancouver. The Heather Trail traverses open subalpine meadows with wildflowers in summer and golden larches in fall. In winter, Manning Park Resort offers downhill and cross-country skiing in a classic mountain setting.

The "Matterhorn of the Rockies" rises to 3,618 metres above a pristine wilderness park on the BC–Alberta border. Accessible only by trail or helicopter, Mount Assiniboine Provincial Park rewards the effort with some of the most dramatic Rocky Mountain scenery on earth — turquoise lakes, wildflower meadows, and a pyramid peak that dominates every view.

Bowron Lake Provincial Park is home to one of the world's great canoe circuits — a 116 km chain of lakes, rivers, and portages through the Cariboo Mountains. Paddlers spend 7–10 days completing the loop, sharing the wilderness with moose, black bears, beavers, and bald eagles in near-total solitude.

BC's largest provincial park at nearly one million hectares, Tweedsmuir is a vast and largely roadless wilderness stretching from the Coast Mountains to the Interior Plateau. The Rainbow Range — ancient shield volcanoes painted in ochre, red, and purple — is one of BC's most surreal landscapes. Hunlen Falls, at 260 metres, is among Canada's tallest free-falling waterfalls.

Canada's only national park you can drive to the summit of, Mount Revelstoke offers a unique combination of old-growth cedar rainforest at its base and open subalpine meadows at the top. The Meadows in the Sky Parkway winds 26 km to the summit, where wildflowers carpet the plateau from July through September.

Canada's first mountain national park, Glacier protects the heart of the Columbia Mountains and the historic Rogers Pass — a marvel of engineering that carries the Trans-Canada Highway through one of the world's most avalanche-prone corridors. Over 400 glaciers cover 14% of the park, and the Illecillewaet Neve is one of the most accessible glaciers in Canada.

Yoho — a Cree word meaning "awe and wonder" — perfectly captures this compact but spectacular national park on BC's eastern border. Emerald Lake glows an impossible green, Takakkaw Falls thunders 384 metres into the valley, and the Burgess Shale fossil beds preserve 500-million-year-old sea creatures in extraordinary detail.

Kootenay National Park spans the western slopes of the Rockies from icy peaks to warm valley floors, offering one of the most diverse landscapes in the mountain parks. The Radium Hot Springs pools draw visitors year-round, while Marble Canyon and the ochre-coloured Paint Pots are among the most unusual geological features in the Canadian Rockies.

One of the most remote and sacred places in Canada, Gwaii Haanas is jointly managed by Parks Canada and the Haida Nation. The park protects the southern third of Haida Gwaii — ancient rainforests, rich marine ecosystems, and the UNESCO World Heritage Site of SGang Gwaay, where weathered totem poles stand among the ruins of a Haida village abandoned in the 1880s.

One of the most remote wilderness areas in North America, Spatsizi Plateau Wilderness Park protects a vast sub-arctic plateau in BC's far northwest. The park has no roads, no facilities, and no trails — just raw wilderness roamed by mountain caribou, grizzly bears, wolves, and Stone sheep. Access is by floatplane or a multi-day horse trip.

Compact but breathtaking, Joffre Lakes Provincial Park packs three impossibly turquoise glacial lakes into a short but steep trail near Pemberton. The upper lake sits directly beneath the Matier Glacier, which calves ice into the water throughout summer. The vivid blue-green colour — caused by glacial flour suspended in the water — makes every photo look unreal.

Naikoon Provincial Park protects the wild northeastern tip of Haida Gwaii — a windswept landscape of ancient spruce bogs, towering sand dunes, and 97 km of remote Pacific coastline. The Pesuta shipwreck, slowly being swallowed by the forest at the mouth of the Tlell River, is one of BC's most atmospheric and photogenic landmarks.