There’s lots of great hiking in Whistler, but it’s easy to forget about it sometimes because of the steep price of the gondola. I buy the 5-day edge card every year, which comes with one free summer sightseeing pass, so I’ve been trying to take more advantage of this free day over the past few years. In 2023, I used it to hike the High Note Trail on Whistler when I backpacked to Russet Lake for a night. This year, I returned to check out the hiking trails on Blackcomb.

There’s lots of unmarked scrambling available on Blackcomb, but if you want to stick to the marked trails, you can knock out most of them in one day along the Decker Tarn Loop Trail. You start by taking the Blackcomb gondola up to Rendez-Vous and then heading into the alpine trail zone. We started by taking the Alpine Loop Trail (#12) onto the Overlord Trail (#13). If you want minimal elevation gain, stick to the Overlord Trail for the rest of the hike. It will take you all the way to Decker Tarn, which has a fantastic viewpoint of Overlord Mountain. 

The trail to the viewpoint is ~4.5km, so it doesn’t take too long. If you want to make it a bit more challenging and enjoy some extra viewpoints, you can add in both the Lakeside Loop (#15) and the Decker Loop (#16), which is what I did. The Lakeside Loop hikes up to a little pond, while the Decker Loop has the most elevation gain and hikes up to a viewpoint. The visibility was really poor in the morning on the day I did the hike, so unfortunately, I missed a lot of the views. We enjoyed lunch at the top of the Decker Loop and the clouds started to lift in the afternoon, providing sneak peeks of the backcountry.

I like to do the harder terrain first, so we did the two climbs on the way to Overlord Viewpoint, and fortunately, by the time we made it there, we could see a lot more of the views. We stopped for a second break on some of the big rocks next to Decker Tarn. We debated continuing further and hiking up Decker Mountain (there’s no formal trail, but you can do a scramble to the top), but ultimately decided to head over to Whistler to see the skybridge instead.

The only trails on Blackcomb that we didn’t do were Marmot Trail (#14), mostly because I didn’t see it, and the Blackcomb Burn, which is a series of trails climbing from the base to Rendez-Vous. This is your only option if you don’t want to pay for the gondola. Despite the poor morning views, we still had a great time exploring the trails on Blackcomb because the wildflowers appeared to be approaching peak bloom as we were visiting! I love all the colourful flowers that grow in the backcountry and have been working on my identification skills over the past few summers, so I had fun looking at all the different wildflowers.

After lunch, we took the Peak to Peak gondola over to Whistler, followed by a ride on Peak Chair to the top. There’s now a bridge and lookout on the top of Peak Chair that have incredible views of the surrounding mountains. Even though I get to go up there in the winter, I do enjoy comparing the summer conditions. I don’t find the trails to be too busy on Whistler, it’s mostly locals, but the crowds around the gondola infrastructure and the skybridge are primarily tourists and it can get pretty crowded. 

All in all, I had a fun day. We didn’t pick the best day to do the hike since we spent the first 3 hours of the day in the clouds, but we still managed to see all the views and it didn’t cost us anything to ride to the top. Personally, I wouldn’t pay extra for this experience since I ski there every year, but it’s a nice little perk to be able to check out some of the alpine views in the summer. If you’re a local and don’t want to pay for the gondola, there’s so many other hikes to choose from, but for the tourists, I think it’s definitely worth it! Maybe I’ll return sometime in the future for Decker Mountain!