The self-proclaimed “Outdoor Recreation Capital of Canada,” the town of Squamish, British Columbia – located approximately halfway between Vancouver and Whistler – has just about everything any lover of adventure and the great outdoors could possibly want. During a four-night stay last summer, I had time to for a diverse array of activities, from hiking the Stawamus Chief, the granite monolith that is Squamish’s most famous geographical feature, and mountain biking the trails around town, to kayaking on a tranquil lake and whitewater rafting on the wild Elaho River. Along with these adventures on land and water, I also took to the skies on a flightseeing trip over the rugged Tantalus Mountains looming over the Squamish Valley.
Fortunately, the conditions on the morning of the flight were absolutely perfect. The sharply etched peaks and ridges punched into the clear blue sky, glaciers cascading down their sides. The weather was so fine that the airplane’s wings even reflected the snow and rock as we flew over the mountains.
The mountains almost felt close enough to touch as we soared past them in our four-seater plane. Several of the high valleys enclosed azure alpine lakes ringed with dark evergreen forests clinging to the slopes. Higher up, there was only exposed rock, snow, and the jagged, pale blue ice of the numerous glaciers.
Words like spectacular and magnificent are overused, but I can’t help but want to apply them to the landscape we flew over on this flightseeing trip. I leave it to those reading this post to decide, based on these photos, whether they are justified.
My trip to Squamish was hosted by the Vancouver, Coast & Mountains regional tourism organization in partnership with local tourism suppliers. This flightseeing excursion was operated by Glacier Air.