Fall Hiking in Whistler!
Fall is here and hiking in Whistler is spectacular! Check out our Best Whistler Hiking by Month for inspiration!
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. Brandywine Falls Provincial Park is such a popular, accessible and beautiful sight that it has a large and elaborate viewing platform directly opposite the falls. Located just 20 minutes south of Whistler, Brandywine Falls Provincial Park is just off of the Sea to Sky Highway.
Very impressive falls from a great viewing platform- Convenient, free parking off the Sea to Sky Highway
- Sea to Sky Trail here continues to Whistler Village
- Swim Lake is just 5 minutes away
- The Whistler Bungee Bridge is not far
- Idyllic sitting areas overlooking the falls and valley
- Dog friendly & bike friendly
- Accessible & amazing year-round
No camping is allowed in the park- Gets very crowded in the summer
The impressive falls are just one of a few sights to see in Brandywine Falls Provincial Park. Swim Lake, the Whistler Bungee Bridge and the Sea to Sky Trail running through the park make it a hiking, biking, jogging, snowshoeing paradise. You can set off from Whistler Village by bike on the Sea to Sky Trail and reach the falls in about an hour or two.. and rarely emerge from forest! The Sea to Sky Trail miraculously avoids roads and civilisation for most of its 33 kilometres. The Whistler section is 33 kilometres long, however the Sea to Sky Trail extends south and north of Whistler even further. If driving from Vancouver, keep your eyes out for the Brandywine Falls sign on your right about 25 minutes north of Squamish or 20 minutes south of Whistler Village. The parking lot is immediately off the highway and the short 1 kilometre trail takes you over then alongside Cheakamus River to the viewing area. The only facilities in the park are pit toilets and picnic tables and there is no charge for hiking or for parking your vehicle in the park. The gate off of the highway is locked at night and in the winter so at these times you simply park at the edge of the highway and hike past the gate.
In the winter you often see people strapping on snowshoes for the short trek to the falls in the snow. The falls are great and convenient to visit anytime of the year. In the summer months it can be busy, but the rest of the year you often have the falls to yourself. Viewing the falls at night, under a full moon is quite a memorable experience. Brandywine Falls Provincial Park is attached to the wonderful Sea to Sky Trail which runs between and beyond Whistler and Squamish. It is a wide, gravel biking and hiking trail that will eventually extend north to Pemberton. Most visitors to the park just have a quick trip to the falls viewpoint and back and miss out on some amazing sights further along. Just a couple kilometres from the parking lot on the Sea to Sky Trail you will come to the amazing Whistler Bungee Bridge. The bridge is beautiful, huge and atrociously expensive looking. The area around the bridge is so remote feeling that when you catch sight of the Bungee Bridge, you almost gasp in surprise. There are viewing areas along the frighteningly abrupt cliffs and lots of space on the bridge to see the sights. Whistler Bungee operates here usually only when bookings have been pre-made, so often the bridge is deserted and serene. The folks at Whistler Bungee are very friendly and welcome you to watch people jumping and even try to coax you into trying.
Brandywine Falls Provincial Park Info...
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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Madeley Lake, misnamed "Powell Lake" on some maps, is a well hidden, though easily drivable lake in beautiful Callaghan Valley. Unlike the terrible gravel road(4x4 ...
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Whistler has an absurd number of wonderful and free hiking trails and Parkhurst Ghost Town certainly ranks as one of the most unusual, exotic and interesting. Parkhurst was a little ...
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Nairn Falls is a wonderful, crashing and chaotic waterfall that surrounds you from the deluxe viewing platform that allows you to safely watch it from above. The beautiful, green ...
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Garibaldi Park Wildlife & History
Plants of the Whistler Region is an excellent book that includes great pictures and descriptions of most trees you will find in Whistler. Small enough to fit in your pocket and comprehensive enough to identify most things you will encounter growing in the forests of Whistler. Along with conifer trees and broadleaf trees the book has chapters on flowers, berries, ferns and shrubs. You can find Plants of the Whistler Region on Amazon, the Whistler Library and at Armchair Books in Whistler Village. The author Collin Varner has a wonderful series of Plants of.. books on various regions beyond Whistler. Plants of Vancouver and the Lower Mainland, Plants of the Gulf and San Juan Islands and Southern Vancouver Island, and Plants of the West Coast Trail. In the last couple years he has started a new series of books. The Flora and Fauna of Coastal British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest and Edible and Medicinal Flora of the West Coast: British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest. A Passion for Mountains by Kathryn Bridge is a fascinating look at Don and Phyllis Munday's prolific exploration of the mountains in BC. Based out of Vancouver, they were dominant figures of the climbing community in the early 1900's. In 1923 they visited their friend Neal Carter in Alta Lake(Whistler) and explored the mountains around the valley.. many for the first time!
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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The Rubble Creek trailhead is the main access point for many of the best hikes and sights in Garibaldi Provincial Park. Rubble Creek is located midway ...
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The Cordilleran Ice Sheet covered most of north-west North America for much of the last 2.6 million years. At the Last Glacial Maximum during the Last ...
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Tom Fyles (27 June 1887 - 27 March 1979) was an astoundingly skilled climber that figured prominently in the climbing community of Vancouver for more than two ...
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The second Caterpillar tractor in Parkhurst Ghost Town is considerably harder to find despite being just a few metres from the hulking Caterpillar at the shore ...
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Cirque: a glacier-carved bowl or amphitheater in the mountains. To form, the glacier must be a combination of size, a certain slope and more unexpectedly, a ...
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Emerald Forest is a cute little forest that is well hidden between Whistler Cay and Alpine. From Whistler Village, if you go down to the end of Lorimer ...
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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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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
January February 
March April May 
June July August 
September October November December
The short, winding, and ever-changing hiking trail to Rainbow Falls is the same as the much more popular trailhead for Rainbow Lake. The trailhead is marked as the Rainbow Trail, and the trail quickly ...
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Jane Lakes are a very remote feeling set of lakes in the beautiful wilderness near Cheakamus Crossing. Consisting of three lakes, West Jane Lake, East Jane Lake and Little Jane Lake, they have a great ...
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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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Callaghan Lake Provincial Park is a relatively untouched wilderness of rugged mountainous terrain. The valley walls were formed by relatively recent glaciation. Evidence of this can be seen in the ...
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