Spring Hiking Has Arrived!
Spring is here and summer is not far off! The road to Parkhurst Ghost Town is accessible now! Whistler Train Wreck is free of snow too. Check out Hike in Whistler May 2022 for inspiration!
Keyhole Falls are found just a couple kilometres upriver from Keyhole Hot Springs. The unmarked trailhead and parking area for Keyhole Falls are just a couple kilometres past the parking area for Keyhole Hot Springs. If you don't have a rough idea where it is, or expect an obvious sign, you will likely get lost in the maze of logging roads in the area. Mount Meager looms high above Keyhole Hot Springs and it, and the surrounding peaks are known collectively as the Mount Meager Complex.
Whistler & Garibaldi Hiking
Alexander Falls 
Ancient Cedars 
Black Tusk 
Blackcomb Mountain Brandywine Falls Brandywine Meadows Brew Lake Callaghan Lake Cheakamus Lake 
Cheakamus River 
Cirque Lake Flank Trail Garibaldi Lake Garibaldi Park Helm Creek Jane Lakes Joffre Lakes Keyhole Hot Springs Logger’s Lake Madeley Lake Meager Hot Springs Nairn Falls Newt Lake Panorama Ridge Parkhurst Ghost Town Rainbow Falls Rainbow Lake Ring Lake Russet Lake Sea to Sky Trail Skookumchuck Hot Springs Sloquet Hot Springs 
Sproatt East Sproatt West Taylor Meadows Train Wreck 
Wedgemount Lake Whistler
Whistler Aerial Views
Alexander Brandywine Blackcomb Callaghan Cirque Joffre Keyhole Logger's Madeley Panorama Sproatt Parkhurst Rainbow Russet Train Wreck Wedge Glacier Wedgemount Whistler
The Meager Complex produced the most recent, major volcanic event in Canada in the last 10,000 years. The eruption 2400 years ago spread ash as far as Alberta. More recently, in 2010 a massive debris flow swept down and into the valley causing Pemberton to be evacuated. The eruption 2400 years ago left a huge pumice outcrop 2 kilometres long and 1 kilometre wide. Keyhole Hot Springs is located 100 kilometres from Whistler(Village Gate Blvd). Though most of the 100 kilometres is on logging roads, it is driveable by most cars without any trouble. The massive Innergex hydroelectric project has turned this once quiet wilderness into a war-zone. On the plus side, the old logging roads near Keyhole Hot Springs and Keyhole Falls are now well maintained and smooth. The hot springs at Keyhole flow out of the ground adjacent to the swirling, crashing and wonderfully glacier coloured water of the Lillooet River. The colour varies with the season, but for the most part it is a wonderful, deep, milky turquoise. When the sunlight penetrates the deep valley, the milky turquoise changes to an unnaturally bizarre, emerald green colour as it swirls all around you. Sitting in the springs you look across to the vertical rock face and the massive, truck sized chunks of it that lay in the river next to you. The Lillooet is fed from various glaciers and snowy mountains visible all the way to Pemberton. At the Lillooet River crossing in Pemberton Meadows take a look in the distance and you will make out the spectacularly jagged and violent looking peak of Mount Meager. It is also a good place to reflect on the fact that Mount Meager produced the larges volcanic eruption in Canada, in the last ten thousand years. It occurred about 2400 years ago and Keyhole and Meager Hot Springs are symptoms of current volcanic activity and another major eruption is possible.
Keyhole Falls Aerial Views
Meager Slide Debris Field Aerial Views
Meager Hot Springs(aka: Meager Creek Hot Springs) is located 93 kilometres northwest of Whistler, was beautifully developed into gorgeous pools, with a caretaker and usage charge. At its height of popularity, Meager Hot Springs had 30,000 yearly visitors. Unfortunately, due to two recent massive landslides it seems unlikely to ever officially reopen. Below is a picture of Meager Hot Springs in 2009.
Just a decade ago, in 2009, a nice, expensive access bridge was installed. A few months later it was dramatically obliterated from another slide in 2010.
New Access Trail to Meager Hot Springs
In 2014 the new VOC Harrison Hut Trail was cut through the forest, allowing reasonably convenient access to Meager Hot Springs once again. Unfortunately this access road is in a bit of a logging and construction zone, so don't be surprised if the road is blocked by a rock slide or road construction.
The old access bridge over the Upper Lillooet River which cost nearly a million dollars was wrecked in seconds in 2010. There was considerable wrangling and negotiating to get it built in in 2009, but now it will almost certainly never be rebuilt. The area is far too active. Access to the springs is now via the Harrison Trail via the south side of Upper Lillooet River, above and beyond the still visible, still awe inspiring, mudslide carnage. With the catastrophic mud and debris slide let loose from Devastator Peak in 2010, the nice new (in 2009) million dollar bridge to the Meager Creek Hot Springs was destroyed. Though destroyed doesn't even begin to describe it. Looking on the now, dead end road, where the bridge once stood, the place still looks a mess. "Meager Creek FSR is closed indefinitely; no access to the hot springs." This is from the BCParks Upper Lillooet Provincial Park site, and evidently quite accurate.
More info, details, maps and directions to Keyhole Falls
Fantastic Books About Geology in BC
Here are two excellent books on the Geology of British Columbia. In Search of Ancient British Columbia by Barbara Huck is one of our favourites. It focuses on southern BC and covers each individual region separately. The Lower Mainland chapter explains the geology, paleontology and archaeology of the region stretching from Vancouver, Sea to Sky, Garibaldi Park and north to Mount Meager and Meager Hot Springs. Quite a lot of the book is devoted to how the last ice age shaped the land and inhabitants of southern BC. The chapters on Vancouver Island are particularly good as the geological history was particularly chaotic and the history of glaciation around present day Victoria is very interesting. Geology of British Columbia: A Journey Through Time by Sydney Cannings, JoAnne Nelson and Richard Cannings is a beautiful history of BC's geology and the 200 million year history of creatures living in this extraordinary corner of the world. The authors take us on a journey through time, describing the collisions of island chains called terrains, the sliding of plates, the erupting of volcanoes, and the movement of glaciers that created British Columbia as we know it today. They also describe the rich legacy of fossils left behind as a result of all this geological activity.
Whistler, the surrounding mountains, and Garibaldi Provincial Park are home to two types of bears. Black bears and grizzly bears. Black bears are ...
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Ablation Zone: the lower altitude region of a glacier where there is a net loss of ice mass due to melting, sublimation, evaporation, ice calving or ...
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Corrie Lake is the surreal looking lake that can be seen across the valley from Whistler Mountain. While hiking the High Note trail along Whistler ...
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Inosculation is the technical name for two or more trees that have fused together into a single bizarre looking tree. They are colloquially known as ...
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Scree: from the Norse “skridha”, landslide. The small, loose stones covering a slope. Also called talus, the French word for slope. Scree is mainly formed ...
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Mountain hemlock is a species of hemlock that thrives along the west coast of North America from Alaska to California. In Whistler and Garibaldi Park you ...
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Mills Winram was a very active mountaineer from Vancouver with some very notable ascents in the 1920's and 1930's. He, along with Fred Parkes and Stan ...
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The Table is an extraordinary flat-topped mountain located in Garibaldi Park just one kilometre south of Garibaldi Lake. Sometimes reflexively referred to as ...
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Whistler & Garibaldi Hiking
Alexander Falls Ancient Cedars Black Tusk Blackcomb Mountain Brandywine Falls Brandywine Meadows Brew Lake Callaghan Lake Cheakamus Lake Cheakamus River Cirque Lake Flank Trail Garibaldi Lake Garibaldi Park Helm Creek Jane Lakes Joffre Lakes Keyhole Hot Springs Logger’s Lake Madeley Lake Meager Hot Springs Nairn Falls Newt Lake Panorama Ridge Parkhurst Ghost Town Rainbow Falls Rainbow Lake Ring Lake Russet Lake Sea to Sky Trail Skookumchuck Hot Springs Sloquet Hot Springs Sproatt East Sproatt West Taylor Meadows Train Wreck Wedgemount Lake Whistler Mountain
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The Sproatt East trail is a beautifully wild, steep, but relatively short trail to the magnificent, wide open alpine and summit of Mount Sproatt. Mount Sproatt (1834 metres) towers over Whistler Valley ...
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Joffre Lakes Provincial Park is a gorgeous park with extraordinarily coloured lakes, waterfalls, stunning mountain peaks and ominous glaciers pouring into the valley. Joffre Lakes is one of those incredible ...
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Black Tusk is the extraordinarily iconic and appropriately named mountain that can be seen from almost everywhere in Whistler. The massive black spire of crumbling rock juts out of the earth in an incredibly ...
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Brandywine Meadows is a nice, relatively short hike to a massive flower filled valley high up in Callaghan Valley. Located 40 minutes south of Whistler, this tough and sometimes muddy trail gains a huge 550 ...
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