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Winding Your Way Whistler: Traveling the Sea to Sky Highway
Whistler’s one of the great outdoor playgrounds of North America, but getting there can be half the fun. A ride along the celebrated Sea-to-Sky Highway serves up platefuls of unbelievable scenery–and traveling one or two quirky pit stops along the way.
The Route
The Sea-to-Sky Highway describes that portion of Highway 99 between Vancouver, British Columbia and Whistler. Those are outstanding poles, given Vancouver’s one of Canada’s biggest and most thrilling cities and Whistler–well, as we said, Whistler’s a preeminent mountain hub, host to the world-famous Whistler Blackcomb ski resort.
The route embarks from West Vancouver’s Horseshoe Bay and heads up the coast of Howe Sound, one of the southernmost of the grand fjords indenting British Columbia’s rainforest coast. It reaches the head of the sound at Squamish, then treks north into the Pacific Ranges to Whistler. The drive’s well named: Views sweep from tidewater to glaciated peaks. Needless to say, vistas don’t come prettier than these.
Lovely Hamlets
You’ll pass through a number of charming towns on your journey inland along the Sea-to-Sky Highway. Horseshoe Bay itself is delightfully situated at the mouth of Howe Sound, and a great place to watch the ferries and fishing boats plying the waters at the edge of the Strait of Georgia. Farther up the highway, Lions Bay, Porteau, and Britannia Beach enjoy their own equally fetching settings. And then there’s Squamish, the “Outdoor Recreation Capital of Canada” and a real anchor of the scenic drive, given it’s where the road leaves saltwater and burrows into the burly coastal mountains.
Natural Landmarks
Amid the fjord beaches, temperate-rainforest conifers, and snowy ramparts that define the Sea-to-Sky experience, there are a slew of special natural wonders marking the drive. These include several mighty cataracts. There’s Shannon Falls, for example, which, tumbling some 2,000 feet, rank as B.C.’s third-highest waterfall. Not as tall but mesmerizingly beautiful is Brandywine Falls.
Near Squamish, you can appreciate the monumental loom of Stawamus Chief, one of the world’s biggest granite monoliths, and the ice-draped volcanic summit of Mount Garabaldi. Just north of town, one of the largest gatherings of bald eagles on Earth occurs in midwinter at Brackendale. And not far from that eagle hangout along the Squamish River is Alice Lake Provincial Park, a great place (in summer, that is) for a dip.
Unique Detours
In Britannia Beach, you can explore the remnants of an enormous historic copper mine at the Britannia Mining Museum. You can even try your hand at gold-panning!
Near Whistler, meanwhile, a trailhead right off the Sea-to-Sky Highway provides access to one of the more unusual landmarks in the province: the Whistler Train Wreck. An easy stroll along the whitewater Cheakamus River leads you to a string of seven forest-hidden boxcars, which stem from a derailment back in the 1950s. Left where they lay, the cars are now lavishly decorated by accomplished graffiti.
Pulling into Whistler after a leisurely journey up the Sea-to-Sky Highway, you’ll have a deep sense of southwestern British Columbia’s incomparable grandeur–not to mention a little insight into its human and geological history. The best part? You get to do it all over again on your way home from the ski slopes!
Emilio Thompson always heads to the mountains whenever he gets the chance. He loves sharing his experiences and tips for anyone visiting Whistler and other popular areas and is a regular online contributor for a number of travel-related websites.
