Best Pacific Northwest Drives - Sea to Sky Highway
This is probably best done as at least a three-day weekend if you are starting from Seattle. The Sea to Sky Highway (a.k.a. Hwy 99) runs from the Peace Arch border crossing to Canada at Blaine, through Vancouver, past the world-famous Whistler ski resort and on through the Coastal Range to Pemberton and beyond. This route can be particularly great for a combination of a driver and a skier. The highway winds up Howe Sound to Squamish, a bustling little satellite community from Vancouver with good accommodations and dining. A little farther north is the Whistler and Blackcomb ski mecca, which, I’m told, should be on every serious skier’s bucket list. What a great place to drop the serious skier(s) and get on with the serious driving.
As fun as this road is, it is imperative to stop at Nairn Falls Provincial Park, which is relatively unknown and stunningly beautiful.
From there the drive smooths out entering the Pemberton Valley, but the mountains are still spectacular. There is a choice to carry on and make a loop back to Vancouver (forgetting the skiers) via the Cariboo Highway and the Trans-Canada, but to make a day trip of it from Squamish there is a spur up the Birkenhead River on Pemberton Portage Road. This peels off to Birken Lake and the N'Quatqua band’s reserve. Post-pandemic the reserve was still closed to outsiders, or at least signed as such. Respecting that, I did not continue to D’Arcy at the head of Anderson Lake, the historic waterway to Lillooet. There can be no complaining, however, about driving through the glacier-laden peaks all around.
Here is the usual drive-along video. Quite long at nearly 10 minutes. It is hard to capture the scale of the Coast Range mountains, but don’t miss Nairn Falls at around 2:16.
Squamish is a good base for this drive. Dinner at the Copper Coil feels more like home than Whistler does for a native. From D’Arcy at the end of this drive it also reasonable to get back to Seattle in a very long day.
An apparently kitchy but actually delightful experience is riding the Sea to Sky Gondola, which takes you up to majestic views of Howe Sound, Squamish and the mountain range. Up top there are snowshoeing / walking trails to warm you up for a weekend brunch. Brunch is very good considering the trip it took to get to your chafing dish there. Go for the food, stay for the view.
Here’s a clickable map of the route, starting from Vancouver for readability:
