Westwood Plateau Golf & Country Club

Few courses in Metro Vancouver demand as much respect from the first tee as Westwood Plateau, a private club perched high above Coquitlam on the flanks of the Coast Mountains. Opened in 1995 and designed by Michael Hurdzan and Dana Fry, the course was carved into a dramatic hillside setting that gives players sweeping views across the Fraser Valley and toward the North Shore peaks — scenery that competes hard for your attention when you should be thinking about club selection.

The terrain is relentlessly vertical, with significant elevation changes running throughout the round. Approach shots that look straightforward on the card become exercises in reading slope and wind, and the forested corridors lined with Douglas fir and western red cedar punish anything that strays offline. The layout rewards local knowledge, and members who've learned its rhythms have a genuine edge over visitors.

Coquitlam sits at the edge of Metro Vancouver where the suburbs give way to mountain wilderness, and Westwood Plateau captures that threshold feeling — refined and well-appointed, but always with raw, rugged landscape pressing in on all sides.