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Squamish: The Sea-to-Sky Adventure Getaway
Adventure & Outdoors
Walk Out to the Birds at Piper Spit
A free boardwalk jutting into Burnaby Lake where numbered turtles sun themselves and herons ignore you completely.
Adventure & Outdoors
A free boardwalk jutting into Burnaby Lake where numbered turtles sun themselves and herons ignore you completely.
Piper Spit is a little wooden boardwalk that juts straight out into Burnaby Lake, and reaching the end puts you in the middle of herons, wood ducks, geese and the occasional bald eagle conducting its business overhead. There are also turtles. Western painted turtles, specifically, basking on floating logs with numbers painted on their shells. This is turtle research, not graffiti, and explaining the distinction is one of the better conversation starters available for free in the Lower Mainland. The viewing platform offers the elevated angle, and the full lakeside loop stretches to about 10 km of flat boardwalk and forest if you want to extend the afternoon considerably. It's free, it's flat, and it produces that particular quiet where two people stop talking at the same time, which is a good sign on a date.
