Stawamus Chief main hiking trail expected reopen in April | CBC News
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A popular hiking trail in the Sea to Sky region is expected to reopen this spring, with cleanup work continuing through March.
B.C. Parks closed the Stawamus Chief main trail on Dec. 27, 2025, after a rockfall sent debris over the trail.
Megan Kobitzsch, the Sea to Sky section head for B.C. Parks, said Tuesday that scaling work is underway.
“About 20 metres of the trail has been impacted,” Kobitzsch said. “So there were some pretty large-sized boulders that came down and took a bunch of trees out.”
The first slide took place on Dec. 26 around 10:30 p.m., and a second slide occurred three days later.
A geohazard assessment found that several large rocks, approximately three to four metres in diameter, came down, crashing into trees and also taking the soil with them onto the trail.
Scaling work will take roughly a week, and then the cleanup will start.
“The cleanup crew is going to use a helicopter, we think maybe one to two loads, so probably about 20 minutes of flying,” Kobitzsch said.
Materials including wood will be helicoptered into the location so crews can start rebuilding the stairs that were taken out by the boulders and rocks.
Kobitzsch is optimistic the trail will reopen in a few weeks.
“We’re on a bit of a tight timeline,” Kobitzsch said. “We are expecting early April. We’re working as hard as we can.”
“We understand that the Stawamus Chief Park is world-renowned and people love coming here,” Kobitzsch said.
Squamish-based geoscientist Pierre Friele believed a freeze-thaw scenario caused the rockfalls due to the fluctuating temperatures on the day.
“It perfectly matches the temperature dropping from above zero to below zero, and then boom, you get the rockfall,” Friele said back in December.
B.C. Parks is asking people to stay out of the area as work is being done and rocks are dropping with the scaling.
“People need to understand that rockfalls will continue to exist here at the Stawamus Chief and just to use caution and to avoid the area, maybe during sort of extreme weather,” Kobitzsch said.
Historically, rockfalls have occurred during a sudden warming or cooling of temperatures.
A rockfall occurred in a different area of Stawamus Chief Provincial Park last month. A video from the Stawamus Chief webcam captured rocks falling from the mountain’s north face on the Zodiac Wall around 6:30 a.m. PT on Feb. 11.