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Black Tusk

Cirque Lake

Newt Lake

Wedgemount Lake

Logger's Lake

Black Tusk

Joffre Lakes

Wedgemount Lake

Adit Lakes

Brandywine Meadows

Northair Mine

Whistler Train Wreck

Callaghan Lake

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!

Brandywine Meadows Maps

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 ...
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Brew Lake Maps

Brew 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 ...
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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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Rainbow Falls Maps

The short, scenic and easy hiking trail to Rainbow Falls is located just a short, half kilometre from the Rainbow Lake or Rainbow Trail trailhead. The trail begins by ...
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More Whistler Hiking Trail Maps

Best West Coast Trail Guide 

Whistler & Garibaldi Park Glossary A to Z

Coast Douglas-fir trees are medium to extremely large trees that you will encounter in Whistler and Garibaldi Park. They are the second tallest conifer ...
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Bench: a flat section in steep terrain.  Characteristically narrow, flat or gently sloping with steep or vertical slopes on either side.  A bench can be ...
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Wedge Creek cuts through the valley that separates Wedge Mountain and Blackcomb Mountain and empties into Green River near the north end of Green Lake.  ...
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The Pacific yew or western yew is a coniferous tree that grows in Whistler and along the coast from Alaska to California. The Pacific yew’s unique ...
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Whistler spruce is a hybrid of the Sitka spruce and the interior Engelmann spruce. Sitka spruce trees thrive in the rainforests of the Pacific Northwest ...
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Bivouac or Bivy: a primitive campsite or simple, flat area where camping is possible.  Traditionally used to refer to a very primitive campsite comprised of ...
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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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The Spearhead Range is a subsection of the Garibaldi Ranges that runs in an arc that connects Whistler Mountain and Blackcomb Mountain.  The Spearhead ...
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More Hike in Whistler Glossary

Free Camping Gear Delivery to Garibaldi Park

The Best Whistler & Garibaldi Park Hiking Trails!

Wedgemount Lake itself is a magnificent destination for a day hike or spectacular overnight beneath the dazzling mountain peaks and stars above Garibaldi Provincial Park. Many sleep under the stars on one of ...
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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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Keyhole Hot Springs (aka Pebble Creek Hot Springs) is located 100 kilometres from Whistler (Village Gate Blvd). Though much of the drive to Keyhole is on logging roads, the route is driveable by most cars ...
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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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More Whistler Hiking Trails & Maps

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