Porteau Cove Provincial Park
- Good for Kids:
- Yes
7 reviews for Porteau Cove Provincial Park
7 reviews in English
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Review from Andrew W.
White Rock, BC
5/7/2012
Park is in a very beautiful setting, very scenic, the water is always beautiful to watch. Often seals and otters playing in the water.
If you're a scuba diver, it is paradise, multiple reefs with abundant life, showers (although cold), a divers building with change rooms and more.
If you're a camper... be prepared to reserve to get in, the site fills to capacity rapidly. Also be prepared to pay, it's $38/site/night and you have no option to get no electricity and save the $8/night for the juice. At least for that price you get nice hot showers and clean bathrooms.
Bring your own firewood, the stuff at the park is $7 for a pathetic sized bundle and it's not even seasoned dry wood. -
Review from william b.
2/4/2012
This is a pretty cool place. It's always scenic, but can be eerily picturesque on a grey day. Kind of a one stop shop for BC scenery
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Review from Alicyn C.
12/5/2010 2 photos
My absolute favorite place to be. Home away from home. I have been camping at this campground since I was a kid. It is close to the city, and the area is just absolutely stunning. I could sit and be memorized by the ocean for hours on end and of course watch the crows that often frequent the area.
If you are a light sleeper this campground is not for you. It is located right beside the train tracks. I have always slept through the sounds of the train except for one night when we were camping in a spot that is pretty much right beside the tracks before heading into the walk in sites. I woke up in the middle of the night with the train lights shinning on the tent. It felt as though our tent was actually on the tracks.
Also, this is a busy campground and often taken up by rv's who have reserved their spot weeks in advance. If you are lucky enough to get in and enjoy the true beauty of tent camping beside the ocean then I envy you as it is my absolute favorite thing to do. -
Review from Marc D.
Vancouver, BC
2/15/2009
This beautiful little park right off of the Sea to Sky Highway gets you nice and close to the water, with an amazing backdrop of snow covered mountains. It is located on the Southernmost fjord in North America and offers camping as well as day use. Beautiful spot.
They sank an old ship to attract marine life and scuba divers.
When visiting today - even though it was around 0 degrees and quite "brisk" there were several dozen scuba divers going nuts. Apparently there are octopus, anemones, shrimp and lingcod among all of the artificial reef.
It has a nice walkable rock beach, which was freezing today - but a beautiful view nonetheless. -
Review from Lee N.
Vancouver, BC
8/20/2010
A good dive site with great parking right by the stairs to the beach, if you are there early. The bottom is has many manmade objects put out for divers. Those giant dungeness crabs you see are in a park so don't touch, I know they look yummy. There is a pull out about 1 mile north of the turn off to Porteau that you can park at walk down across the tracks and enter the water outside the park in 10 minutes you can have a limit of yummy Dunegies, YOU DO NEED A SALT WATER FISHING LICENCE AND FOLLOW YOUR LIMIT.
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Review from Thomas W.
6/28/2011
This one is a tough one. I'm rating it purely as a campsite. We've camped all along the Pacific coastline from BC, WA, OR down to CA. This is truly one of the best campgrounds we have ever experienced. The sites are large, the water side sites are amazing. The picnic table is literally by the beach overlooking the water as well as the firepit. You can walk right from your site out to the beach to the water. Just sitting here in your camp chairs with the fire going and the water and mountains as your backdrop is simply breathtaking.
The amenities are A+ for a campground. Newer picnic tables with a metal shelf on the end for your BBQ? I have never seen that before. Sites are flat and well groomed. Electrical is supplied with most sites so even if you are tent camping, bring along an electric water kettle, coffee maker, pump for your air mattress, heck electric blanket for your sleeping bags! The bathrooms are awesome. They even have a special spigot for drinking water (and another for water you'd use for other things like washing your dishes). They recycle. The bathrooms have been modernized, even the toilets have 2 modes for flushing. You get free hot showers, handicap accessible stall and shower along with the regular ones, the bathrooms are huge, even little things like the stalls are separately by concrete so it's like you have your own room. The camp store has snacks, large variety of beverages, ice, t shirt and souvenirs, lots of little things, and of course firewood. And if you need anything, you are literally only a 15 min drive from Squamish. It's got all the things one could ever hope for in a campground other than a guarantee on the weather.
So why the 1 star? The damn train. You have to realize, we came here fully knowing this. Our home is by train tracks so we're used to train noises and love them. They are almost like hear the ocean while falling asleep. But from a bit of a distance since city code has noise ordinance. But we're used to the train and we read reviews of people coming back to Porteau Cove so how bad can it be? We even picked a beach side site so we're as far away from the track as can be. Night #1, the first train came around midnight while we were asleep. Heard the honking from a distance but could easily sleep through it. It gets closer and closer and kept honking. It must have honked all the way to Squamish as we hear it die down in the distance. But It also braked all the way through our camp area. Long freight train that literally took forever to completely go by. Our site was shaking, felt like an earthquake, high pitch squeal of the brakes could not be softened with a pillow over our heads, oh and that perpetual horn, you have to realize it doesn't matter where you are on this campground, you are only a couple of hundred meters away from the track and so it felt like the train was coming right at us and in fact going through our body as the whole place shook as we braced ourselves. We both ended up awake in a cold sweat. The most terrifying way of waking up from a dead sleep. That night 2 other trains came by with the last one at about 4am. Needless to say, we had no sleep that night. We talked and we wanted to give it a chance and got ear plugs. Didn't matter. Night 2, the first one did it again, honked like crazy from a distance and kept honking til we can hear the honking die down in the distance. The ear plugs soften the noise but when the whole place is shaking and your head feels like it's only inches away from the tracks, it was loud. We ended up spending a 3rd night even. But the problem is, by then you are just waiting for every little noise whether it be a truck or harley driving by and just waiting to see if it's going to be the next train. We have no problem being so close to the highway. We've slept fine in many campgrounds by the highway and in fact here even. The trucks and harleys didn't wake us up at all. Til the first train on day 1. From that point on, our heads were just on alert and was just bracing for the next train and every noise that comes by. After 3 sleepless nights, needless to say nothing the site can offer will make things better. We even talked to others and to a couple of rangers too. Yeah there's been complaints filed against BC Rail. They don't care. They pay the fines and in fact the locals says they can tell which idiot is driving the train since some would intentionally honk loudly at the campsite and around homes in Squamish as it goes past that small town. The park itself is great for a day trip. As a campsite, it was bittersweet. It has the makings of one of the top campsites we've ever had the pleasure of staying in, including breathtaking ones at the top of cliffs with ocean views on the US side. But with the train, we will never come back. We loved trains. But now even at home, we are sometimes startled by the sound of the train at nights. I'm sure it will pass but we will never return to this site ever again. -
Review from Kim W.
Vancouver, BC
7/21/2009
For a quick, breathtaking visit or, from what I understand, for scuba diving, this is a great spot. For camping, however, it's lacking. Despite the stunning views, the location near both the highway and Howe Sound means the serenity is cut dramatically by traffic noise, the occasional train, and motor boats on the water. With campgrounds more removed from such things relatively close by, I'd recommend visiting Porteau Cove for an hour or two, an making camp elsewhere.
