Swim and Paddle Sasamat Lake

Four kilometres of gentle climbing buys you a wooden platform over Howe Sound with Bowen Island below and the city behind you.

A West Vancouver forest walk past 300-year-old cedars to two waterfalls that make you instinctively lower your voice without agreeing to.

Big-sky dyke-top walking where the Fraser meets the sea, with a 10-metre treehouse that grown adults are absolutely allowed to climb.

Flat, breezy, and bald-eagle-dotted: Delta's Centennial Beach to the dyke, where you set the distance and the eagles set the pace.

An 11-km round trip on the Howe Sound Crest Trail delivering clifftop lunch and ferries crawling below like bath toys.

Ten flat kilometres of boardwalk and birding around a city lake where the ducks at Piper Spit have clearly been briefed.

Prince of Whales runs heated catamarans out of Granville Island after orcas and humpbacks, with a 95 percent sighting rate and hot chocolate on board.

Locals' pick over Capilano: a free 50-metre suspension bridge over a roaring gorge, with emerald swimming holes and no eighty-dollar admission guilt.

An 8 km Cypress climb past historic log cabins and First Lake to a summit above the Lions and Howe Sound.

A leafy Fraser River island hiding Victorian heritage buildings, bald eagles and a profound lack of other people, right off Highway 99.

Flat South Langley trails through meadow, farmland and heritage barn territory, rated 4.7 by thousands of people who could not stop talking about it.

Grab rentals on Denman, go counter-clockwise, and let 9 km of Coal Harbour yachts and Lions Gate Bridge views do the romantic heavy lifting.

A flat forest walk along an emerald creek to a waterfall that roars in spring and turns swimmable by late summer.

Paddle a glacial fjord from a sheltered postcard village and earn a legendary Honey Doughnut on the way back.