Hiking is a popular weekend activity for many Vancouverites, but one ambitious local turned the hobby into a personal record.
Vishnu Vardhan completed 75 hikes in less than a year.
Vardhan says he always felt a longing for the mountains, but his first hike told him that he had a long way and many hikes to go.
"It all started in 2021, when I was new to hiking; my first hike was Panorama Ridge (Garibaldi)," he tells V.I.A. "For a sedentary lifestyle person, 34 kilometres and a 1600-metre elevation gain in 12 hours on a first hike are way too much. I couldn’t walk for the next few days, but I fell in love with mountains!"
Since then, Vardhan has trekked around 1,029 kilometres, climbed approximately 70,000 metres in elevation, and spent nearly 1,000 hours in the mountains.
In 2022, he began organizing group hikes which saw "hundreds of people [become] part of this journey." For the new year, Vardhan plans to summit a few of the world's Fourteener mountains (a mountain peak that has an elevation of at least 14,000 ft or 4,267 m).
V.I.A. asked the avid adventurer to rate his travels and list his top 10 local B.C. trails based on their beauty and conquerability. These are Vardhan's picks:
Top 10 most beautiful hikes
- Panorama Ridge (Garibaldi)
- Mount Rohr (Pemberton)
- Sugarloaf Mountain
- Tricouni Mountain
- Flora Peak
- Mt Lindeman
- Mt Harvey
- Lions Summit
- Mt Coliseum
- Evans Peak
Top 10 beginner-friendly hikes
- Bear Mountain
- Norvan Falls
- Hollyburn Mountain
- Pump Peak
- Rolley Peak
- Brohm Lake
- Vedder Mountain
- Chadsey Lake
- Hoover Lake Trail
- Widgeon Falls
