Canada

From the rodeos of Alberta to the ice-fields of Yukon there are outdoor activities in Canada from coast to coast. Champagne powder snow draws in the winter sports junkies while big rivers and huge lakes provide Canada adventure travel lovers with world-famous fishing and canoeing.

British Columbia (BC) in western Canada is home to jagged mountain ranges and craggy coastlines, which give way to wide prairies and farmlands in the southern and central provinces. Eastern areas benefit from the lower lying Appalachian Mountains and mighty St Lawrence River. In Canada adventure travel holidays can start with scenic cruises from Boston to Canada/New England as this is a great way to capture the amazing beauty of the East Coast of Canada and have a great vacation that will provide for a lifetime of memories.

The enchanting blend of European and North American culture in Quebec, makes Canada’s eastern states truly unique. The second biggest country in the world boasts the world’s longest coastline (243,792 km), bordered by the Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic Oceans. Inland, 35 per cent of Canada’s land mass is blessed with dense boreal forests, rich in needle-leaf coniferous species.

The outdoor activities in Canada are heavily dependant on the country’s weather and climate. In Winter temperatures fall below freezing across much of the country, and territories within the Arctic Circle stay in the minuses for seven months of the year. Canada’s tallest peak, Mount Logan (5,959m), frequently experiences lows of -40C. Still, in Canada adventure travel options aren’t all limited to winter sports: temperate southern and coastal provinces enjoy warm, humid summers, with western and south-eastern areas receiving high rainfall.

Canada is a huge country and if you want to see lots of different areas in a short space of time, internal flights are your best bet. If you’d rather not do so much travelling it’s probably a good idea to stay local; pick a good base location and you you can find most outdoor activities in Canada – it just really depends which time of year you visit.

The west of Canada is where you’ll find British Columbia. Here you can enjoy an array of experiences that might not seem like they fit together: You can surf on the coast, ski on the snowy resorts and mountain bike along the rocky trails.

Cultural and scenic Ontario and French-speaking Quebec are the eastern regions. The former is home to cosmopolitan paradise Toronto and the natural beauty of Niagara Falls. The latter is a vibrant hub of adventure and culture. The mountains here are excellent for the winter sports.

In Canada adventure travel can easily be tailored to more extreme tastes with subarctic Yukon in the northwest a remote and challenging climate. There’s certainly enough adventures for any thrill seeker, while the natural beauty of the Prairies in the mid-west is ideal for combining exhilarating experiences with wonderful scenery.

Untouched icy beauty combined with metropolitan cities makes for limitless possibilities. There are many unusual methods of traversing vast Canada. Helicopter rides offer the opportunity to see the snowy canvas from a birds-eye-view. The diversity of outdoor activities in Canada is striking: In the summer you can float serenely down the Rideau Canal in Ottawa, in winter when it freezes over you can return and enjoy it as the world’s longest skating rink.

The cities in Canada are regularly voted as having some of the highest quality of life, and even if you’re mainly there for the adventure you should take some time to enjoy the urban delights, too.