As evident in the video below, the Lower Mainland looks pretty spectacular in winter when there’s sun in the sky and snow on the ground!
Winter 2016-2017 Snow Video
Metro Vancouver and the surrounding region got tons of snow between December 2016 and February 2017. It just kept on coming!
Check out the winter video below to see what it was like (or at least the brighter side of Wintergeddon 2016/2017)!
The Lower Mainland in Snow & Ice
About the Video
As the combination of sun and snow doesn’t hit the Lower Mainland all that often, we invested a lot of time driving from one end of the region to the other between December 2016 and January 2017. From Whistler to White Rock to Harrison Hot Springs we traveled!
Places in the Video
The video starts up the Sea to Sky Highway in Whistler on Blackcomb Mountain. We then travel down to Squamish, visiting the Sea to Sky Gondola and Porteau Cove along the way. We then visit all three of the North Shore ski hills before hopping over the Lions Gate Bridge to Stanley Park. From there the video goes to various Vancouver points of interest, over to Richmond, across to White Rock and Surrey, through the Fraser Valley and then back to Burnaby via Maple Ridge, Pitt Meadows, Coquitlam and Port Moody.
In the video and on our journey we saw all kinds of different ice formations, a flock of Snow Geese, frozen lakes, river ice flows, people skating, a number of parks closed for safety reasons, and piles upon piles of snow.
Filming the Video
Taking all these photos was challenging for a number of reasons. First, we couldn’t be in all places at once. The snow didn’t stick around for long everywhere, and not every day was sunny. We had to pick and choose, and in many cases return with our cameras to the same places more than once. We think it was worth the effort though and hope viewers of the video do too.
Taking photos in this kind of weather can also be somewhat treacherous. We fell flat on our face on the parking lot ice at Pitt Lake, sunk up to our ankles in mud at Stave Lake, froze our fingers while holding our camera at numerous places, and prayed hard while climbing down banks at various locations to get the ideal shot!
Everywhere looked amazing. Some of our absolute favourite places in the snow on our trips around the Lower Mainland though included the locations listed below and for the following reasons:
- All the ski hills with their trees covered in snow.
- Places with ice and snow on the water, including at Stanley Park and Coal Harbour.
- The ice on the lake at Harrison Hot Springs was amazing – it had frozen like ripples in all sorts of different designs.
- The ice and snow at Stave Lake – it looked like a landscape from another planet.
- Various places along the Fraser River including in Maple Ridge and New Westminster where we could see and hear the ice flows, especially when combined with a sunrise or sunset.
- Burnaby Mountain where the snow on the totem-style structures was bending over and looking like white candy canes. (Note: a scene similar to this one made it into our previous video – Vancouver in the Sun and Snow).
Everywhere we went where there was both sun and snow was magical. The above places though were especially unique and amazing.
Vancouver in the Sun and Snow
Prior to releasing the above video on the “Lower Mainland in Snow & Ice” we published a video entitled “Vancouver in the Sun and Snow.” It went live on Christmas Eve and by the end of January it had been viewed over 300,000 times on Facebook! That’s about 10% of the entire Lower Mainland’s population!
To have a look click Vancouver in the Sun and Snow. Places featured in this first video include points of interest from the North Shore to Richmond, Surrey, New Westminster, Port Moody, Coquitlam, Burnaby and Vancouver.
For ideas on activities to do in Vancouver during the colder months, click Vancouver in Winter.
To see some of our other videos, click Lower Mainland Videos.
