Visitors to Mt. Seymour Provincial Park will need free day passes

Starting next Wednesday, anyone heading to Mount Seymour Provincial Park will need a free day pass to access the area.

The B.C. government is implementing the pilot project in a bid to manage soaring popularity of the area, and the congestion that comes with it.

On sunny weekends, it’s not unusual for the road up the mountain to be clogged with vehicles, some facing an hours-long wait to make it to a parking lot.

1:45 North Shore mountains packed with holiday skiers and snowboarders

“We’ve got over a million visitors in 2020 — that’s a 20-per cent increase over just a couple of years,” NDP Parliamentary Secretary for Environment Kelly Greene said.

“We really need to manage the number of people that are coming by vehicle. We’re seeing a lot of congestion, a lot of stress on behalf of people that just want to relax and be outside.”

People will be able to obtain a pass up to two days ahead of time, for one of two daily time slots: 7 a.m. to noon or noon to 4 p.m.

People with lift passes for the Mount Seymour Resort downhill ski area will not need one of the passes.

The free park pass idea is not new.

In 2020, the province launched a similar program for six of the province’s most popular parks in order to maintain COVID-19 social distancing and to test the concept as a crowd management tool.

Visitors can obtain their passes at BCParks.ca, and are being encouraged to print them or to download them onto their phone, as cell phone signal may not be available in the park.