About the Trail
The Sea to Sky Trail is the name of the dream. The dream is a family oriented, multi-user mountain bike trail spanning the Sea to Sky corridor, joining communities from Horseshoe Bay to Lillooet and beyond. Stretching from D’Arcy to Horseshoe Bay, the Sea to Sky Corridor is a world renowned destination for recreation and eco-tourism. The Sea to Sky Trail’s ecology covers a diverse range from the marine coastal environment of Howe Sound through the Whistler valley mountain pass to the interior Ponderosa Pine ecosystem of D’Arcy. In addition to the attraction of the area’s biodiversity, physical beauty and aesthetic values, guests are drawn to corridor to take advantage of the wide range of outdoor recreational activities offered. Stretching from the ocean to the mountains, the Sea to Sky Corridor is a place people travel great distances to visit.
One of the main objectives behind the concept of the Sea to Sky Trail was to provide a continuous trail parallel but separate from the highway linking the communities in the Corridor. The concept of a comprehensive trail network that can be used by a range of recreational activities and integrated into a “point to point” trip is not new. For example, in Europe these point to point tours, like the Route de Vin or Hüttenzauber, are visited by large numbers. The Sea to Sky Trail would be an additional attraction for visitors to the corridor, a conduit into the natural environment providing experiential opportunities for a broad range of participants.
the Steering committee
A Sea to Sky Trail concept was first conceived in the early '90s. This popular community project has seen intermittent progress over the past 12 years, and while much of the proposed trail exists on the ground, the Sea to Sky Trail is not officially recognized as an entity. By 2004, in an effort to remedy this lack of official status, the Sea to Sky Trail Steering Committee was struck by the Squamish – Lillooet Regional District (SLRD), including the Village of Pemberton, the Resort Municipality of Whistler and the District of Squamish.
Phase 1 of the Sea to Sky Trail is to start with kilometre 0 at the new waterfront development planned in Squamish, wind its way north for 190 kilometres through the communities of Whistler, Pemberton, Mount Currie & D’Arcy to end at Anderson Lake (see Map 1). Designed to provide a mellower, alternate activity to the proliferating extreme options marketed in the corridor, and primarily for use by families on mountain bikes, the trail will nevertheless be a multi-use trail. The Steering Committee envisions activities like hiking, trail running, snowshoeing, cross-country skiing, and mountain biking to occur throughout the length of the trail. Certain sections may also be designed to accommodate horseback trail riding, and some motorized vehicles, depending on the desires of the communities through which it passes. Whistler does not permit motorized vehicles on its multi-use trails.
Draft Masterplan
The Steering Committee retained Cascade Environmental Resource Group Ltd. to prepare a masterplan for the proposed Sea to Sky Trail. This document was prepared as part of the master planning exercise and is presented in three sections. The first covers the overall vision of the trail, its feel and style and examines the economic, social and health benefits this recreation feature would bring to the area, complete with an overview of similar successful multi-use trails. The second section examines the various methods available to tenure land over which the trail flows with ideas for successfully marketing the Sea to Sky Trail and the third section contains a technical evaluation of the various potential routes of the trail.
Click here to download the Sea to Sky Trail Masterplan Draft IC. 432.75 Kb
Click here to download the Sea to Sky Trail Map North 7.20 Mb
Click here to download the Sea to Sky Trail Map South
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