Mount Seymour

The Name And The Mountain

The mountain rises from the shores of Burrard Inlet and Indian Arm to a summit of 1,449 metres, and is named for Frederick Seymour, second governor of the Colony of British Columbia. What people call Mount Seymour is really the ridge; the main summit is one of several and is also known as Third Peak, which is why trail descriptions talk about First and Second Pump Peaks before they mention a summit at all.

BC Parks puts the park at 30 minutes from downtown Vancouver, 15 km northeast by the Second Narrows Bridge and Mount Seymour Parkway, with Deep Cove, North Vancouver and Lynn Valley as the closest communities.

The First Television In Western Canada

On 16 December 1953, the CBC's CBUT Channel 2 made the first television broadcast in Western Canada from a transmitter on Mount Seymour. It was both the first television broadcasting site in the West and the first mountaintop broadcasting site in Canada, and several Vancouver broadcasters still transmit from the mountain. The towers you can see from the city are not decoration.

An 81-Hectare Resort Inside A Free Park

Mt Seymour Resorts operates skiing, snowshoeing, tubing and tobogganing inside an 81-hectare controlled recreation area within the provincial park: 39 runs, 12 of them lit for night skiing, one high-speed quad, two double chairs and a magic carpet, with the Three Peaks Lodge at Parking Lot 4 and the Enquist Lodge at Lot 2.

Everything outside that boundary is BC Parks and free. The resort even maintains a groomed pathway on the west side of the road from Lot 1 to the First Lake and Dog Mountain trailhead so that backcountry users can reach the trails safely, which is an unusually cooperative arrangement and the reason a free snowshoe day is possible here at all if you bring your own equipment.

The two routes visitors come for are Dog Mountain and the Mount Seymour trail to the peaks. The table sets them against the easy ones, so a group can split without splitting the car. In winter every one of these becomes a different proposition and the two shortest are the only ones most visitors should attempt on snowshoes.

The Rest Of The Network

Beyond those, the Goldie Lake loop is a self-guided interpretive trail of about 2 km with an easy rating and minimal climb; the Flower Lake loop is 1.5 km through sub-alpine bog with good birdwatching; the Perimeter trail climbs 240 metres in 1.5 km from the Deep Cove lookout; and Old Buck runs 2.3 km to the Baden-Powell junction or 5.5 km to Perimeter, with 670 metres of total elevation change.

The serious one is Elsay Lake: 17 km, 9 to 10 hours return, 500 metres of change, rugged, easy to lose in bad weather, with an emergency shelter at the end for emergencies only. BC Parks says only experienced and well-equipped backcountry travellers should hike it, and recommends late June through October.

The Baden-Powell, And The Walk To Deep Cove

About 5 km of the 42 km Baden-Powell trail runs through this park, accessible from the Baden-Powell picnic area and parking lot 2 km up the main road from the park entrance. The section heading east to Deep Cove is 3.2 km, about an hour, with 275 metres of elevation change; the section west to the Mushroom junction is 1.7 km, 40 minutes, 130 metres.

The trail was a British Columbia Centennial project started in 1967 by the Girl Guides and Boy Scouts of Canada and completed in 1971, running from Deep Cove on Indian Arm to Eagle Ridge Drive near Horseshoe Bay. BC Parks warns that its condition outside the park boundaries varies considerably.

What Has Happened Here

In February 2019 an avalanche struck near Runner Peak in Mount Seymour Provincial Park, above and beyond the ski area. Two snowshoers were caught; one clung to a tree and was rescued, and the other, a 39-year-old from Surrey, was found and recovered by North Shore Rescue two days later. The rescue manager's account, reported by CBC News, was that both men were well prepared for cold-weather camping but carried no avalanche safety equipment such as beacons.

That is the pattern rather than the exception on the North Shore mountains: people who are fit, sensible and equipped for a walk, on terrain that requires equipment for a different discipline. The distance from a Vancouver car park to avalanche terrain here is measured in tens of minutes.

What The Authorities Actually Say

BC Parks does not soften it: "The mountainous backcountry is extremely rugged. The backcountry is unforgiving, and weather can change suddenly." It directs winter visitors to check avalanche conditions at avalanche.ca before heading out, to make a trip plan and to leave it with someone, and to check the park's own trail conditions report. From mid-December to 31 March it installs two marked winter routes from the kiosk at the north end of Lot 4, with hazard ratings posted there.

The practical line for a visitor: the resort's own Discovery Snowshoe Trails are inbound and marked and are the right choice for anyone without avalanche training, and they need no BC Parks day-use pass. Everything above and beyond the resort boundary, including the popular route towards the peaks, is backcountry with all that implies. Mt Seymour Resorts asks anyone parking overnight to leave emergency contact details, departure time and expected return on the dashboard, which tells you what kind of place this is.

The middle row is the visit this page is written for, and the one that suits most families and most first-time visitors. The long row is a real mountain day with a real weather dependency. Note that the summit trail in winter is not the same route as in summer, and is not a snowshoe stroll.

Shuttle fares and parking rules are from mtseymour.ca's own getting here and shuttle pages, and transit fares from TransLink, all read in Q3 2026. The last column is where a winter day goes wrong.

The Parking Reservation Nobody Reads

On winter weekends and holidays, buying a ticket means choosing "Arriving by car" or "Arriving by bus", and full season pass holders need a parking reservation before 4:30 PM. The resort's wording is not ambiguous: "Your vehicle will be turned away if you do not have an Arriving by car ticket or reservation." Weekdays are first come, first served and rarely a problem.

Accessible parking exists in several places: at least two stalls in Upper P4 and up to ten on adaptive programme days, two to four by the Season Pass and Ticket Office, two to four in lower P4 and two to four in P2 near the tubing and tobogganing, with a 15-minute drop-off zone at the Alpine Activity Centre. The accessibility page sets this against the rest of the region.

- Winter tyres are mandatory for every vehicle on the access road from 1 October to 31 March, snow or no snow, and in extreme conditions all-wheel drive with mountain and snowflake tyres is required; traffic attendants may deny access. [mtseymour.ca/the-mountain/getting-here, read in Q3 2026] - Tickets sell only at mtseymour.ca. Third-party resales are voided on the hill, with the sole exceptions of the Canadian Lift Pass and SnowStart Kidz Pass through Ski Canada. [mtseymour.ca/tickets-passes/tickets, read in Q3 2026] - Weekend and holiday lift tickets are four-hour time slots, not day tickets, and can be reloaded free at Guest Services if space allows. Weekday tickets run from your start time to closing. [mtseymour.ca/tickets-passes/tickets, read in Q3 2026] - You do not need a BC Parks day-use pass for the resort's own snowshoe trails, which the resort states outright; you may need one, free but reserved, for the backcountry lots P1 and Lower P5 in peak winter. [mtseymour.ca/winter/snowshoe; bcparks.ca/mount-seymour-park/, read in Q3 2026] - Everyone sliding must buy a pass, there are no toboggan rentals at all, and the tube park has a 122 cm height minimum and a 120 kg weight limit. Tobogganing has no age limit and children 3 and under slide free with a paying adult, one per adult. [mtseymour.ca/winter/tubing-tobogganing, read in Q3 2026]

The Mountain For People Who Want A Price First

If you are travelling with children in winter, this is the mountain, and it is not close. It is the only one of the three that will tell you what a toboggan run, a tube park session or a snowshoe pass costs before you leave your hotel, and its shuttle is a third of the price of the Cypress coach.

If you are travelling in summer, the calculation changes completely. There is no summer resort operation here and no coaster, so the mountain becomes a free hiking destination with BC Parks' unusually detailed trail figures, and Dog Mountain becomes one of the best two-hour walks within half an hour of a Canadian city.

The Day That Works Best

Drive or shuttle up in the morning, walk to Dog Mountain or slide with the children, and come down to Deep Cove in the afternoon for the village, the water and the doughnut queue. The two are fifteen minutes apart by road and 3.2 km apart on the Baden-Powell trail, and together they make the best half-day out of Vancouver that does not involve a ferry.

The alternative shape, for anyone without a car who wants everything bundled, is the guided Grouse and Capilano day, which costs several times as much and does not come here. The rest of the trip, and every other price on this site, sits on the Vancouver city guide.