North Shore

The North Shore is the reason Vancouver has the outdoor reputation it does. Three mountains rise directly out of the water on the north side of Burrard Inlet, the highest trailheads sit above 900 metres, and you can be on snow forty minutes after leaving a downtown office. There is nowhere else in Canada where a major city touches real subalpine terrain this abruptly.

That abruptness is also the problem. The elevation that makes these trails good in winter is the same elevation that catches people out: it is raining at sea level and dumping snow at the trailhead, the parking lot is at 1,000 metres, and the difference between a pleasant afternoon and a search-and-rescue callout is often just daylight and a wrong turn out of a busy lot. North Shore Rescue is the busiest SAR team in Canada, and it is not because the terrain is extreme.

What the region is good for

Winter, mostly. Cypress and Mount Seymour hold reliable snow from December through March at trailhead elevation, and both have short, marked routes that work well on snowshoes. Dog Mountain and Hollyburn Mountain are the two I send people to first and second respectively.

Short days and bad weather. The low-elevation trails - Quarry Rock, Lynn Canyon, the Baden Powell corridor - stay snow-free most winters and work as rain-day options when the alpine is a whiteout.

Sunset over the city. The whole region faces south into Vancouver. That geometry is not an accident of the photographs you have seen; it is why nearly every viewpoint here is a sunset viewpoint rather than a sunrise one.

Access notes

There is no TransLink service to either Cypress or Mount Seymour trailheads. Both operate private or resort shuttles in winter, both of which need booking. Deep Cove and Lynn Canyon are properly transit-served.

Mount Seymour Provincial Park requires a free BC Parks day-use vehicle pass for the backcountry lots on winter weekends and through the holidays. Cypress Provincial Park does not require a day pass at all, though the resort operates its own paid parking and paid trail networks alongside the free BC Parks trails, which causes endless confusion. Winter tires are legally required on the access roads from October.

Drones are prohibited in all BC provincial parks, which covers Cypress, Mount Seymour and Lynn Headwaters.

Seasons

Season	Reality
Dec-Mar	Snow at trailhead elevation. Snowshoes, not microspikes. Short days - headlamp always.
Apr-May	The worst window. Rotten snow above 800 m, mud below it.
Jun-Oct	Full alpine access; the high ridges and the Howe Sound Crest Trail come into condition from July.
Nov	Transitional and genuinely unpleasant - enough snow to hide the trail, not enough to travel on.