by Keith and Heather Nicol
We recently had a chance to check out the hiking and mountain biking trails along Cheakamus Creek near Whistler. Whistler is known as a hiking and biking mecca and part of the reason is that it has alot of variety of hiking and biking options. In the past we have hiked in the alpine using the lifts at Whistler and this blog : https://keithnicol.blogspot.com/2024/08/try-decker-loop-on-blackcomb-for.html. looks at one of the trips we did last summer. Whistler is also known for its world class lift served mountain biking but on this current trip we decided to check out some other nearby areas. And if you want to hike or bike past a blue green rushing river then the Cheakamus Creek trails should be given a closer look. On this trip we parked at the large parking lot at the Whistler Interpretative Forest Parking lot (which is free) in nearby Function Junction. We hiked on Farside Trail and biked on a variety of the other trails along both sides of the river. These are rated as blue mountain biking trails which means that they are suited to riders with some skill at riding over roots and rocks and the occasional wooden bridge. Over all my favourite trail was Farside for biking due to its proximity to the river but Flashback 2 through 5 were also fun trails but did not have river views. We tended to ride the access rode since it was a fairly fast way to gain elevation but it does have cars on it and it can be dusty. In our case there was little car traffic and next to no dust. Another time we might plan on biking the route to Cheakamus Lake - but since we had hiked it earlier in the summer we decided to focus on the lower trails. It is worthwhile downloading the app Trailforks since it has all of these trails on it and we saw more hikers on these trails than we did bikers. Check this area out on your next trip to Whistler.
