Topographic Map of Vancouver

Vancouver sits on a low coastal delta with the North Shore Mountains rising abruptly across Burrard Inlet. Sea level to alpine terrain happens within a few kilometres, which is why the city's skyline has mountains directly behind it.

The terrain around Vancouver

Grouse, Seymour and Cypress climb past 1,200 m immediately north of the water, while the city itself spreads across almost flat ground between the inlet and the Fraser delta. The map splits cleanly in two: an open, nearly contour-free south, and a dense wall of relief north of the inlet.

How this map was made

Every contour line traces a constant elevation drawn from public SRTM 30 m radar data, extracted with a marching-squares algorithm at a 50 m interval and coloured by height — cool blues in the valley climbing to warm reds on the summits. The satellite base layer and the contours share the same Web Mercator projection, so the lines fall exactly on the ground they describe.

You can regenerate this exact view — and change the interval, colours, resolution or export it as a print-ready SVG — directly in the TopoLines editor.