Mundy Park: Coquitlam's biggest park, lakes, trails and all

Ask a Coquitlam local where they walk the dog, run a loop or take the kids on a Saturday, and Mundy Park is the answer more often than not. At 176 hectares (435 acres), it is the largest park in the city, a big rectangle of forest, lakes and sports fields in the Austin Heights area, and it works equally well for a hard trail run and a slow family afternoon.

The lakes and trails

The park's heart is its two lakes. Mundy Lake is the larger and busier of the pair, ringed by a popular walking trail, while Lost Lake sits deeper in the forest and feels genuinely quiet on weekdays. The walking trails link the two lakes and loop through second-growth forest, mostly gentle, wide and well-used, the kind of routes where you can push a stroller or log training kilometres without tripping over either ambition.

Wildlife is part of the experience. The park is home to black bears, deer, raccoons, ducks, geese and swans, along with a long list of smaller birds, and even some endangered plants. Bears are a real presence in the forested sections, especially in late summer and fall, so the standard advice applies: keep dogs close, give wildlife room, and never feed anything.

The sports side

Mundy is as much an athletics complex as a nature park. The sports fields host soccer and baseball through the season, and the baseball diamond is home to the Coquitlam Reds of the B.C. Premier Baseball League. The lacrosse box is a hub for box lacrosse in the summer months. A disc golf area winds through part of the forest, and a recently added outdoor swimming pool gives the park a summer centrepiece that draws families from across the city.

Add the picnic areas and the playground near the main entrance and you have the park's basic bargain: whatever the ages and energy levels in your group, there is a corner of Mundy that fits.

Planning a visit

The park's address is 641 Hillcrest Street, with the main access off Hillcrest near Como Lake Avenue, and it is open year-round. On summer weekends the lots near the pool and fields fill by mid-morning, while the forest trailheads stay calmer. Fall is the underrated season here: the maples around Mundy Lake turn, the crowds drop away, and the loops become some of the most pleasant easy walking in the Tri-Cities.

The forest itself

Between the lakes and the fields, most of Mundy's 176 hectares is forest, and the city manages it deliberately. The Mundy Park Forest Management Plan guides how the city cares for that woodland, balancing recreation with the health of the trees and the wildlife that depends on them. The forest is second growth, but it is mature enough to feel like real woods: tall firs and cedars over a ferny floor, with the kind of quiet that makes you forget the surrounding streets.

That forest is also why the park matters beyond recreation. A woodland this size in the middle of a growing city is habitat, a heat break in summer and a green anchor for the whole neighbourhood. The city's trail system page lists Mundy's routes among the 90 kilometres of official trails across Coquitlam, but few of those kilometres feel as removed from traffic as the Lost Lake side of this park on a weekday morning.

A park with a movie credit and a mystery

Mundy Park has a small Hollywood footnote: some scenes from the 2006 film Deck the Halls were shot here. It also has an unsolved naming puzzle. The park was originally called "Munday Park," after George Munday, who first bought the land. Somewhere along the way the second "a" disappeared, and nobody seems to know exactly why. The current spelling is the one on the signs, so Mundy it is.

Making the most of it

For a first visit, park near the main entrance and walk the Mundy Lake loop, then push on to Lost Lake if the group is keen. Runners should link both lakes into a longer figure-eight. Families in summer should plan around the pool and playground, while photographers will find the best light on the lake in the early morning, when the water is still and the swans are out.

Regulars have their routines: morning dog loops, lunchtime runs, evening lacrosse games, slow Sundays by the water. First-timers quickly find theirs. However you use it, Mundy Park is the city's all-rounder: big enough to swallow a crowd, wild enough to spot a bear, and central enough that most Coquitlam residents can be under its trees in fifteen minutes, any day of the year, in any weather the Pacific Northwest decides to deliver.