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Newt Lake

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Brandywine Meadows

Logger's Lake

Whistler Train Wreck

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Callaghan Lake

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Black Tusk

Wedgemount Lake

Adit Lakes

Spectacular Whistler!

Whistler hiking is wonderful! Check out our Best Whistler Hiking by Month guides! WeRentGear.com rents tents, sleeping bags, sleeping pads, camp stoves, packs, complete kits and more!

Best Trails This Week!

Best This Week: Whistler Train Wreck and Parkhurst Ghost Town are easy, fun and dog friendly. Check out our May and June Whistler and Garibaldi Park guides here!

Cheakamus Lake Hike RatingCheakamus Lake is a wonderfully relaxing way to get in the wilderness easily and quickly from Whistler Village.  The trail begins on the far side of Whistler Mountain, 8 kilometres from the Sea to Sky Highway at Cheakamus Crossing across from Function Junction.  This 8 kilometre stretch of logging road is fairly bumpy and potholed, but does have the benefit of allowing you to drive the elevation gain instead of hiking it.

  • Easy trail with minimal elevation change
  • Colour of the water is extraordinarily beautiful
  • Several area along the trail with amazing views
  • Exceptionally nice campsites in a natural setting
  • An unmarked trail extends further along the lake
  • Fishing is reliably very good for trout
  • Huge trees along the trail & lots of bear sightings
  • Unmarked route to Russet Lake from Singing Creek
  • Swimming is incredibly cold but exhilarating!
  • Campsites are crowded much of the summer

You can easily manage this road in a car, however carefully and very slowly in parts. Once you reach the trailhead/parking the entire 7 kilometre hiking trail to the end of the maintained Cheakamus Lake trail has barely any elevation gain. Just plenty of gradual inclines and declines along the winding route. In fact, this makes it one of the few trails in Whistler and Garibaldi Park that can boast that.  The nearby Garibaldi Lake trail and the Wedgemount Lake trail make you work for the views, however, the Cheakamus Lake trail hardly makes you work at all.  The trail to Cheakamus Lake takes you through an amazing forest of giant cedars that fill the forest with their amazing aroma.  This forest is so packed with ancient giants that year to year the trail is adjusted by a monster of a tree fallen across the trail during some winter storm. Sometimes the trail bends around these behemoths, but more often they are laboriously chainsawed by BC Parks staff.  The more enormous of these remain as fixtures of the trail.  Either edging the trail or as a mighty obstacle to climb over. One monster of a cedar remained sprawled across, actually along a section of the Cheakamus Lake trail for much of 2012.  It surely surprised every hiker to come to an abrupt end of the trail with a tree across the trail too big to even see over. The bypass route was a hilarious, yet dangerous looking scramble underneath and along the edge of the trail for about 20 metres to get back on the trail at the other side.  Look for it when you pass by.  Though it has been mostly moved the tell-tale wreckage is hard to miss and captivatingly beautiful.  What a sound it must have made, exhibited now by giant cedar spears still menacingly pointing from a break in the massive trunk.

Cheakamus Lake Map v13a

Cheakamus Lake Highlights

There are a considerable number of highlights to the Cheakamus Lake trail and Cheakamus Lake. The forest is amazing. There are lots of bear encounters. The campsites are very beautiful, much nicer than Taylor Meadows or Garibaldi Lake's overcrowded and packed in campsites. Cheakamus River along the trail is an impressive river with a nice suspension bridge to see at the start of the Helm Creek trail, 1.5 kilometres from the Cheakamus Lake parking lot. Cheakamus Lake itself is magnificent. You could hike there 100 days in a row and always be impressed by the varying colours. The lake is an extraordinary shade of green caused by glacial till suspended in the water. This surreal colour is surrounded by the bright green of the untouched wilderness across the lake. And above and beyond the forest you see majestic mountain peaks.

Cheakamus Lake Hike in Whistler

Cheakamus Lake Floating - Garibaldi Park, Whistler

Beautiful Cheakamus Lake

Cheakamus Lake & Surrounding Area Map

Cheakamus Lake Large Map v15a

Cheakamus Lake Trailhead Directions Map

Cheakamus Lake Trailhead Map v3a

Cheakamus Lake Hiking Info...

More Whistler & Garibaldi Park Hiking Maps!

Wedgemount Lake Maps

Wedgemount Lake itself is a magnificent destination for a day hike or spectacular overnight beneath the dazzling mountain peaks and stars. Many sleep under the stars on one of ...
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Ring Lake Maps

Ring Lake is a fantastically serene and wonderfully remote lake similar to Cirque Lake, but considerably farther to hike to reach it. The 10 kilometre(6.2 mile) hike takes you ...
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Blackcomb Mountain Maps

Blackcomb Mountain holds an impressive and ever growing array of hiking trails. From the moment you arrive at the Rendezvous Lodge, you see hiking trails ascend into the ...
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Brandywine Falls Maps

Brandywine Falls is one of the must see sights on the way to or from Whistler. The falls drop from a 70 metre(230 feet), unnaturally abrupt looking cliff to the valley below. ...
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More Whistler Hiking Trail Maps

Best West Coast Trail Guide 

Whistler & Garibaldi Park Glossary A to Z

Cornice: a wind deposited wave of snow on a ridge, often overhanging a steep slope or cliff.  They are the result of snow building up on the crest of a ...
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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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Armchair Glacier is one of the many easily identifiable mountain features around Whistler.  Along with Wedge Mountain and Black Tusk, Armchair Glacier has a ...
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Porteau Cove is a beautiful little stop on the drive to or from Whistler. You will notice the lack of convenient washroom stops on the way to or from ...
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Erratic or glacier erratic is a piece of rock that has been carried by glacial ice, often hundreds of kilometres.  Characteristic of their massive size and ...
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The Fissile is the stunning Matterhorn-looking mountain that is visible from Village Gate Boulevard in Whistler.  Looking up from Village Gate you will see ...
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Every unusual phenomenon in the forest seems to have a name, but one natural work of art seems to be without a commonly used name.  Big trees with ...
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The Cloudraker Skybridge and the Raven’s Eye Cliff Walk are new additions to the summit of Whistler Mountain.  The Cloudraker Skybridge stretches 130 ...
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More Hike in Whistler Glossary

Free Camping Gear Delivery to Garibaldi Park

The Best Whistler & Garibaldi Park Hiking Trails!

Madeley Lake is a gorgeous mountain lake located high up in the Callaghan Valley just a short drive past Alexander Falls.  From Whistler Village it takes about 50 minutes to drive the 27.4 kilometres to get ...
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Blackcomb Mountain holds an impressive and ever growing array of hiking trails. From the moment you arrive at the Rendezvous Lodge, you see hiking trails ascend into the distance. The Rendezvous Lodge is ...
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Sloquet Hot Springs is a wonderfully wild set of shallow, man-made pools fed by a small, all natural, and very hot, waterfall. The pools stretch from the waterfall to the large and crashing Sloquet River. The ...
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Whistler has an absurd number of wonderful and free hiking trails and Parkhurst Ghost Town certainly ranks as the most unusual and interesting. Parkhurst was a little logging town perched on the edge of Green ...
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More Whistler Hiking Trails & Maps

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