Squamish, British Columbia

Where it sits. Squamish occupies the delta at the head of Howe Sound, the southernmost fjord in North America, where the Squamish, Mamquam and Cheakamus rivers empty into salt water. Vancouver is 65 km south and Whistler 60 km north along Highway 99, the Sea-to-Sky, rebuilt and widened for the 2010 Winter Olympics. The town of roughly 24,000 sits in a bowl of granite and hanging glaciers: the Tantalus Range across the river to the west, the Garibaldi volcanic massif east, and directly above the highway the Stawamus Chief. This is the territory of the Squamish Nation, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw, whose name for the place is usually rendered as mother of the wind.

The Chief. The Stawamus Chief is a granite dome rising about 700 metres straight off the highway, left bare by glaciers that quarried away its western face. It is among the largest granite monoliths on earth and it made Squamish a climbing town. The Grand Wall, the obvious clean sweep on the south face, was first climbed in 1961 by Ed Cooper and Jim Baldwin over forty days of siege tactics, and the surrounding forest now holds thousands of routes on granite of exceptional quality, plus one of the world's densest concentrations of boulder problems in the Chek and Grand Wall boulder fields. Non-climbers hike to the three summits on a steep trail with chain and ladder sections — First Peak is about 1.5 hours up, Third Peak a good deal more — and the view down the fjord from the top is the image the town sells.

The rest of the geography. Shannon Falls drops 335 metres in three tiers a couple of kilometres south, reached by a five-minute walk from its own provincial park; it is the third-highest waterfall in British Columbia. The Sea to Sky Gondola, opened in 2014, lifts from near the falls to a ridge at 885 metres with a suspension bridge and viewing platforms; its haul cable was deliberately cut in August 2019, sending the cabins to the ground, and cut again in September 2020, and the operator rebuilt both times. In winter, Brackendale, just north of town, hosts one of the largest gatherings of bald eagles anywhere — the January count set a record of 3,769 birds in 1994 — feeding on spawned-out salmon in the Squamish and Cheakamus rivers. In summer, thermal winds funnel up the sound most afternoons and turn the Squamish Spit into a kiteboarding and windsurfing site with reliably absurd conditions.

From mill town to recreation town. For most of the twentieth century this was logging, pulp and railway country: BC Rail's line ran north from here, a pulp mill operated at Woodfibre across the water, and the West Coast Railway Heritage Park still holds the largest heritage rail collection in western Canada, including the Royal Hudson locomotive. The mill closed, the railway headquarters left, and the town reinvented itself around climbing, mountain biking on the Diamond Head and Alice Lake trail networks, whitewater, and a commuter population priced out of Vancouver. Housing costs and the resulting labour shortage are the town's live political argument.

On screen. The Sea-to-Sky corridor is a standing double for Alaska, Montana, the Yukon and generic wilderness. Christopher Nolan's Insomnia (2002), set in the fictional Alaskan town of Nightmute, was shot in British Columbia with substantial work in and around Squamish, using the fjord, the log booms and the mill infrastructure for its northern setting. Alejandro Iñárritu's The Revenant (2015), otherwise an Alberta production, moved a portion of its shoot to the Squamish valley for river and forest sequences when Alberta ran out of snow. The Twilight sequels relocated their production base to the Vancouver region from 2009 onward and used the coastal forest north of the city, which is why the later films look wetter and greener than the first. One frequent mix-up is worth settling: the original Rambo film, First Blood (1982), was not shot here but in Hope, about 150 km east, where the town still runs its own location trail.

Getting there and timing. Highway 99 from Vancouver takes 50 to 70 minutes and is spectacular and frequently congested on summer Fridays and Sunday evenings; scheduled coaches and a seasonal passenger ferry from downtown Vancouver also serve the town. Climbing season runs roughly April to October, with the Chief unpleasantly hot in mid-July afternoons and often greasy after rain — the granite needs a day to dry. Winters are mild, wet and dark at sea level while Whistler gets the snow. The trails are steep and rough; accessible options are limited to the Estuary dyke paths, the gondola summit boardwalks and the Shannon Falls viewpoint.