Vancouver Island, British Columbia is a top notch outdoor recreation area.

From Victoria, within 100km you can cross-country ski, motorcycle, hike, climb, paddle, camp, plus many other pursuits. Further up Island, there is serious alpine and ice climbing, alpine sking, and vast areas of wilderness.

Guides to Vancouver Island Outdoor Recreation

Contribute your maps, tips, and stories. Tell us what is great about this Island we call home.

• Hiking (VIHiking)
• Mountain Biking (VIMountainBiking)
• Off-Road motorcycling and touring (VIOffRoadMotorcycling)
• Fishing
• Hunting
• Paddling
• Camping
• Quading
• Rock Climbing & Mountaineering (VIClimbingMountaineering)
• Winter Sports
• Other

(Please add your outdoor recreational activity to the list and develop a guide for it)

Vancouver Island Recreational Trail Mapping Project

The VIRecTrailMappingProject intends to collect all of your gps waypoints and tracks and input them into an on-line GIS system for everyone's use.

The foundation of our web GIS will be GIS WebServer, created by the University of Minnesota, NASA and the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources.

Go to VIRecTrailMappingProject for a working example of Minnesota's Recreational Activity GIS - Compass.

Contribute your gps waypoints, tracks, and a short description about the data. Send them to me at psprague at geovisionenvironmental.com

GPS & Mapping Tools

• IMapBC - the BC Provincial on-line GIS
• GPSVisualizer - a GPS mapping program. Has Canadian topo, satellite, and Google maps capability.
• IMapComoxStrathcona - Comox Strathcona Regional District on-line GIS viewer
• GPS Babel for converting waypoints, tracks, and routes from one GPS format to another. Example of use: inputing my Magellan 500 track into your Garmin 76 so you can ride my track.

Remember to respect the land and others out enjoying all that Vancouver Island outdoors has to offer.

• TreadLightly for ways to practice zero to low impact recreation
• RideStealth