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Whistler Train Wreck

Brandywine Meadows

Callaghan Lake

Black Tusk

Adit Lakes

Wedgemount Lake

Newt Lake

Wedgemount Lake

Cirque Lake

Northair Mine

Black Tusk

Summer is Here!

Summer has arrived! Check out our Best Whistler Hiking by Month for inspiration! WeRentGear.com rents tents, sleeping bags, sleeping pads, camp stoves, packs, complete kits and more!

Best Trails This Week!

Best This Week: Parkhurst Ghost Town, Sloquet and Skookumchuck Hot Springs, Rainbow Falls, Logger's Lake, Sproatt East, Cheakamus River, Joffre, and Whistler Train Wreck.

Brew LakeBrew Lake is beautiful mountain lake just a short drive south of Whistler and is relatively unknown and seldom hiked. Laying at the base of Mount Brew, Brew Lake lays in a massive alpine valley of enormous erratics.  On first seeing Brew Lake it looks serene, yet wild and hostile.  The lake is surrounded on one side by idyllic tree covered hills and lakeside cliffs and on the other side a brutal looking wasteland of huge boulders sloping up to the sky.

  • Very off the radar, wild & infrequently hiked
  • Stunning, dramatic boulder field & windswept trees
  • Lots of excellent places to put your tent
  • Not as cold to swim as Joffre, Wedge, Garibaldi
  • Hut on Mount Brew is a surreal little oasis
  • Beautiful views of Black Tusk & Daisy Lake
  • Tricky to find trailhead & tough, steep trail
  • Lake is not stunning like Joffre, Wedge, Garibaldi
  • Snow restricts access well into June
  • Trail is only 5k, but feels like 10k!

Hiking into this wasteland of erratics reveals an amazing paradise of small, island forests, cute streams and endless worlds within worlds to explore.  You find yourself wandering along like a kid mesmerized at what you will find next. Brew Lake itself doesn't come close in wow factor to the postcard-perfect alpine lakes such as Wedgemount Lake, Joffre Lakes, Cheakamus Lake or Garibaldi Lake, but I does beat these lakes in other aspects.  Because Brew Lake is outside of Garibaldi Provincial Park few people have heard of it.  More often than not you will have both the lake and entire valley to yourself.  An increasingly rare occurrence elsewhere that gives the place a quiet calm and that strange and satisfying feeling that there are no other humans for quite some distance.  You have that exhilarating wilderness feeling that sometimes gets lost on other Whistler area hikes when you start the trail from a parking lot packed with cars.  The fact that the Brew Lake trail doesn't have a parking lot or proper trailhead actually makes it more mysterious, adventurous and in some ways more fun.  Brew Lake is shallow and absolutely crystal clear. Mesmerizingly clear.  You can look across the lake and see smooth and rounded rocks scattered across the lake bottom.

Brew Lake Hiking Trail Map

Brew Lake Map v18

The lake is also relatively small at just a few hundred metres across and unexpectedly warm to swim in. Breathtakingly cold lakes are the norm in the Whistler area, but Brew Lake is an exception.  Try swimming in Wedgemount Lake, Joffre Lakes, Russet Lake, Cirque Lake, Cheakamus Lake or Garibaldi Lake for any length of time and you will be shivering cold. You can manage a minute or two swimming in these lakes, but certainly not 20 or 30 minutes as you can in Brew Lake. There are even some massive, flat topped erratics in the lake to swim to and lounge on. The sun makes them amazingly warm on a sunny day. The edge of the lake surrounded by grass areas littered with erratics making it tricky to find a spot for a tent, but easy to find a place to sit.  Once you do find a place for your tent, further exploration reveals countless other great spots. Grassy clifftops, clearings at the edge of streams.

Brew Lake Tent

A third aspect of Brew Lake that beats the local, alpine lake competition is the hike itself. It is amazing. Comparable in difficulty to the Wedgemount Lake trail, though two kilometres shorter and packed with things to see.  From the dozen or so amazing viewpoints on various plateaus steps from the trail to the endless gnarled, weather-beaten, yet captivating forests of twisted, mangled, huge and bewildering trees. Over and over along the 5 kilometre trail you stop and stare in wonder at how a huge tree, 30 metres tall can have an absurd, sideways L-shape in its trunk big enough to stand in.  You see it over and over until eventually you work out that when these trees are young they spend most of the year under metres of snow.  Over the years they grow at an unusual looking right angle, as if growing sideways. Eventually the tree grows big and thick enough to not have the snow push it over and it grows vertical again.  But of course it keeps this hilarious L-shape as it continues to grow.  You start spotting the smaller ones everywhere you look.  The trunk comes out of the ground one metre, then one metre horizontal, then one metre vertical again.  Hilarious.  Absurd and hilarious.

Camping at Brew Lake is Gorgeous

Brew Lake View of Black Tusk

Brew Lake Driving Directions Maps

Finding the Brew Lake trailhead is quite an adventure.  The logging road is long, windy, steep, narrow and unmarked.  The first time you encounter an indication for the Brew Lake trail is when you reach the trail and find the orange or yellow tree markers.  The last road bridge was decommissioned in recent years, so the farthest you can drive with a 4x4 is to this closed bridge one kilometre from the actual trail start.

Brew Lake Driving Directions Map v3

Brew Lake Directions Map v5

More Brew Lake Hiking Info...

Garibaldi Lake Maps

Garibaldi Lake is the centre and base for much of the hiking in Garibaldi Provincial Park. The Garibaldi Lake campsite is located on the amazing, turquoise shores of this massive ...
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Helm Creek Maps

Helm Creek is a cute, meandering creek that winds its way from beyond Black Tusk, down the valley to the wonderful campground that takes its name. From the Helm Creek ...
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Black Tusk Maps

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 ...
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Cheakamus Lake Maps

Cheakamus 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 ...
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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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Surprisingly often in Whistler's forests you will find a tree growing on an old fallen tree or out of a decaying tree stump. Decaying logs and stumps in ...
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The Garibaldi Volcanic Belt is a line of mostly dormant stratovolcanoes and subglacial volcanoes largely centred around Whistler and extending through much ...
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Columnar Jointing: bizarre looking columns of oddly angular rock formations that can be found in many places around Whistler and worldwide.  Generally ...
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The Roundhouse Lodge is the centre of activity on much of Whistler Mountain.  It is where the Whistler Gondola drops off and next to where the Peak 2 Peak ...
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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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Twentyone Mile Creek begins its long and steep journey from Rainbow Lake, high up and between Mount Sproatt and Rainbow Mountain.  Cutting between the two ...
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Along the shore of Green Lake, you will find a monstrous old Caterpillar tractor that dates from the 1930’s.  Abandoned here in the 1950’s, it looks as if the ...
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More Hike in Whistler Glossary

Rent Hiking Gear Whistler and Garibaldi Park

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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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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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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Cheakamus River is a beautiful, crashing, turquoise coloured river that flows from Cheakamus Lake, through Whistler Interpretive Forest at Cheakamus Crossing, then down past Brandywine Falls to Daisy Lake.  ...
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More Whistler Hiking Trails & Maps

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