Trail: Seven Sisters
Distance: 3km
Location: Cultus Lake
Distance from Vancouver: 1 hour 40 minutes
Directions with Google Map: Click here
Adults: 2
Ages of Children Hiking: 2, 4, 7, 10
Dog Friendly: Yes
Bathrooms: Yes
Time it took to complete: 1.5hrs
Jelly Bean Rating: 2
The Seven Sisters trail is short, sweet and pretty spectacular to be on. The trail is surrounded by so many beautiful ferns and still has 3 out of the “seven sisters” Douglas Fir trees standing. The other 4 have fallen from old age.
Finding the Seven Sisters trail was not very easy, to be honest. My 4 year old and I initially did a recon day before we did the full hike with our little adventure posse of 8. The trail was well marked with a noticeable “Seven Sisters,” sign.
The directions to Seven Sisters trail are straight forward: head to Entrance Bay campground, but the whereabouts of the trail and place to park were a bit tricky. I recommend you drive into Entrance Bay campground first so you see the trail. Drive just past campsite 9, and the trail will be on your right hand side (numbers could be changed around by next camping season, so take a look first).
Parking: Unless your camping at Entrance Bay, you cannot park there. Head out of the campsite and park for free at the Entrance Bay picnic area, not Entrance Bay boat launch across the road, unless you have a boat! You will have seen the Entrance Bay picnic area on your right, as you drove to the campground; less than 100m apart. Once you have parked, start walking to Seven Sisters trail.
Seven Sisters trail starts off a bit steep, and makes you second guess parking so far. Don’t worry, the trail is not like this the whole way. Our 4 year olds had no problem hiking the whole way.
The kids were quite interested in the idea of large trees being referred to as seven sisters, and my 4 year old said he would never want seven sisters; fair enough!
You know your at the end of the Seven Sisters trail when you reach a large Douglas Fir tree with a fence around it. We did go inside the fence, but only to hug the beautiful tree, and hopefully add a few more years of life to it.
When you have reached this tree, you will also see different directions to go. The signs show that you can go towards Clear Creek Campground, or you can head towards Entrance Bay, which is recommended if thats where your parked. On your left, you will see some stairs that go up. We were not certain about where this would lead. We went up and its literally just a little upwards loop that comes back down to where you are.
There are no spectacular views up there, but it only takes about 3 minutes to go up and come down. The kids were a bit bummed that there was no lake, view, or hidden candy, but they certainly did appreciate the tree at the end, and so did we.
The Seven Sisters Trail is quite short, but we certainly did take our time. Instead of packing our entire picnic up, we saved it for the end and had lunch at Entrance Bay Picnic Area by the lake; it was beautiful. There is also a really cool park there for the kids to burn off whatever energy they still have from the hike!
Jelly Bean Rating:
We rate the Seven Sisters Hike a 2/5. While the trail is short, easy and does have some cool checkpoints like bridges and a beautiful tree at the end, we found it a bit hard initially to find the trail and a place to park. We had to also take some extra caution when we walked across the busy road from the picnic area to the campsite, as we had 6 kids in our group. Other than that, these beautiful Douglas Fir trees deserve a visit!
Happy Tree hugging 🙂
Sheena xo