“Vancouver is one of the world’s best cities for hiking because the wilderness is right in our backyards,” declares Manfred Schollerman, owner-operator of Rockwood Adventures, a walking tour company. “A twenty minute walk takes you from city streets into a rain forest with thousand-year old trees.”

Asian and European visitors, whose cities are far, far from any wilderness, are particularly awestruck by the close proximity of the forest primeval to civic center, explains Schollerman. Indeed his most popular jaunt, the Capilano River Canyon Walk begins near a shopping center and almost before his walkers can say “banana slug,” they find themselves in a temperate rain forest. Trails weave through an emerald forest of hemlock, red cedar and Douglas fir, over a forest floor carpeted with moss, ferns and flowering plants.

 From the town’s earliest days, Vancouverites vowed to keep their greenery close by. In 1886, the newly incorporated city’s first resolution allowed purchase of a thousand acres of wooded peninsula from the Canadian government. Stanley Park, Canada’s largest city park, includes not only cricket pitches and tennis courts, but forests and a rugged coastline.

Although it boasts an urban skyline--a modest collection of high rises--Vancouver’s skyline is really the local mountains, all the more dramatic for their precipitous rise from behind this city at water’s edge. Grouse Mountain, Mt. Seymour, and Mt. Hollyburn beckon city-dwellers to climb their aerie heights, as do such intriguingly named summits as The Lions and Golden Ears.

City-slickers tend to underestimate the rugged terrain, Vancouver hiking experts point out. While this situation exists in parkland around every big city, the problem is more acute in Vancouver because the terrain is so rugged. When preparing for a hike around Vancouver, do so as you would for an outing in a remote area.

Color Vancouver Green: Politically as well as geographically. Vancouver is the home of Greenpeace and headquarters for many other environmental groups struggling to preserve B.C.’s vast backcountry and ensure that the province remains faithful to its “Super. Natural.” travel slogan.

Vancouver neighborhoods offer some pleasant city walks--through Japantown, Little Italy and the urbane West End. Gas Town and the waterfront offer some fine excursions, too. My favorite walk is around Granville Island, home to theaters and galleries, and a fabulous public market with wide array of fresh food.

To the hiker, though, Vancouver’s best walks are on its wild side. The vast wilderness just beyond Vancouver’s suburban sprawl is not the abstraction it is in North American cities more cut off from the wild. Wilderness trailheads are located at the end of suburban streets. Just minutes from downtown coffee houses is a mist shrouded forest full of inviting hiking trails.

Here’s a trio of trails guaranteed to please the traveling hiker.

The Grouse Grind

(1.6 miles one way)

Why ride when you can hike? Sure the year-round Skyride swoops visitors to the top of 1,250-meter Grouse Mountain in just eight minutes.

But then you’d miss the challenge of the 45-degree climb from Grouse Mountain parking lot through beautiful woods to Grouse Mountain Plateau. Reward for the longest 1.6 miles you’ll ever hike are panoramic views of the city, Vancouver Island and the Coast Mountains.

In winter, Grouse Mountain entices after-work skiers. During the summer, The Grind is kind of a perverse fitness test for locals who tackle the mountain after work. Busiest nights are Wednesday and Thursday. Grouse Grinders meet at Bar 98 for a pitcher of draft and to swap tales of life and times (average hiking time is 90 minutes). Hikers then board a Skyride gondola for the ride down.

The Grouse Grind has become more of a fitness test than a nature trail. Locals measure their times up the mountain in early summer, then compare them with efforts later in the summer. Visitors will take their time (not measure it) on The Grind and smile at the crazy Canadians lurching past them.

Stanley Park's Sea Wall

(6.5-mile loop)

Vancouver’s sprawling playground has the wide lawns, cricket pitches, picnic areas, and military monuments characteristic of a city park, but it’s Stanley Park’s wild side and ocean shore that attracts urban hikers. At the heart of the park, one of North America’s largest city parks, is a dense forest laced with paths.

The Pacific all but encircles Stanley Park, and along ocean’s edge are sandy beaches and a sea wall that offer a walk to remember. One of the best walks in the park in North America, and certainly the best overall walk in Vancouver is the walk along Stanley Park’s seawall.

Saturdays and especially Sundays the seawall is a parade route with in-line skaters and cyclists in one lane, baby strollers, joggers and walkers in the other. Power-walk the one-way, counter-clockwise path in 90 minutes or stroll it in three hours.

Traipse past the Royal Yacht Club and regard the impressive totem poles carved by the Kwakwiutl and Haida in the late nineteenth century. Rounding Prospect Point, the seawall curves southwest and on warm summer days you’re sure to spot sunbathing Vancouverites at Third Beach and Second Beach. Side trails lead to Lost Lagoon, once swamp land and now a bucolic body of water patrolled by coots and wood ducks and visited by Canadian geese and trumpeter swans.

If you tire of walking the seawall, improvise a route back through the park on various signed pedestrian paths; otherwise keep on hiking—the seawall continues several miles past Stanley Park.

Capilano Canyon

(From Ambleside Park to Cleveland Fish Hatchery is 4.7 miles one way)

If you have time for only one hike on the urban edge, visit Capilano River Regional Park, located between North and West Vancouver. The river, cascading through the middle of the park, has carved a deep canyon in the granite.

The name Capilano may be familiar because of the famed tourist attraction, Capilano Suspension Bridge. Traveling hikers might find trails on the west side of Capilano Canyon more inspiring. And locals know if you keep walking there’s an equally charming small wooden bridge over Capilano Canyon that’s free.

Longest and most intriguing trail is 4.7-mile Capilano Pacific Trail leading from Ambleside Park to Cleveland Dam and the Capilano Fish Hatchery.

This walk begins in West Vancouver, or West Van, as residents call their neighborhood bordered by North Shore Mountains and the sea. From the park, the route passes under Highway 1, the Trans-Canada Highway, and under a railway bridge to reach the Capilano River mouth.

From May to September, salmon and trout battle Capilano’s cascades as they swim up-river to spawn. At the mouth of the Capilano River, native North Americans have fashioned traditional fish traps. Salmon are diverted from their up-river swim into rock highways that direct them into roundabouts where they can’t get out.

The path, a one-time logging railway, leads along the river. From a vista point, enjoy grand views of downtown Vancouver, as well as Stanley Park and its skyline of totem poles.

Next the path ascends into a forest of tall cedar and hemlock. Sword ferns, salal and huckleberries line the path which winds among enormous stumps (legacy of logging days) that now serve as nursery logs for plants, ferns and mosses.

One branch of the trail leads to the Capilano Fish Hatchery. Here coho and Chinook salmon, as well as steelhead trout are reared. Through a glass wall, you can watch the fish struggle up-river.