Hiking to Hollyburn Summit near Vancouver, BC

By Keith and Heather Nicol

The Lions are clearly visible from the top

     Cypress Provincial Park has many fine hiking trails and we have reported on a few of them is this blog. Previous posts have dealt with hiking to Eagle Bluffs (https://keithnicol.blogspot.com/2015/03/hiking-to-eagle-bluffs-at-cypress.html)  and also to Mt Strachan (https://keithnicol.blogspot.com/2016/08/hiking-to-summit-of-mt-strachan-in.html) .  We were visiting Vancouver for the Thanksgiving long weekend and when Saturday, October 6 dawned sunny we decided to try another hike in this park.  We opted for a hike to the top of Hollyburn Mountain and we were joined by our son Michael and daughter Kristie and her boyfriend Eric.  Trail information suggested that one starting point was at the near the Alpine Lodge so we started our hike there. In addition, Kristie had done the hike from this location several years ago and so was familiar with finding the trailhead. The trail starts by ascending one of the alpine ski runs served by the Easy Rider Quad Chair. The run is called Runway and after walking a short distance up that run the trail is marked by a vertical post with the name “Baden Powell trail” on it as well as other destinations like Hollyburn Summit. 

There are currently nice fall colours along the route

   The trail crosses several streams which at this time were barely flowing and easy to cross. But the trail was muddy from recent rain storms and is quite rocky and you need to walk across many roots. The trail then reached a more open cross country ski route and from there wended it way to the top. After about 1.5 hours we reached the top and enjoyed the striking views of the Lions, Mt Baker and surrounding rugged mountains. Our GPS recorded a distance of 4.4 km which is about 700 meters longer than some of the on line information suggested .  We ate our lunch on a craggy outcrop and after chatting to some people at the top decided to descend via another route. We had noticed a trail junction part way along showing the route to the Nordic parking lot and decided to try descending to that location instead. This proved to be a much better choice and we encourage hikers to do this hike from the Nordic Parking Lot location since it is faster, less muddy and has fewer rocks and roots. We encountered lots of people doing the hike on this holiday long weekend and most seemed to be using this route as well. In our case Heather who had joined us for part of the initial hike drove the car to the Nordic Parking lot to meet us. We recommend this hike for its fine views and generally open hiking if you ascend from the Nordic Parking lot. For more information on this hike and many others in this popular park see:  http://www.env.gov.bc.ca/bcparks/explore/parkpgs/cypress/  

Having lunch near the summit