Adventure Off-Bike: Hiking on the Berg Lake Trail in British Columbia

3 days

52 km

2060 m ascent

Infos for cyclists wanting to hike (parts of) the Berg Lake Trail:

Camping: Campsites on the Berg Lake Trail have to be reserved well in advance which is not the most practical thing for biketouring. I started looking for spots about ten days before we got there and that seems to be the timeframe when people cancel their reservations. I have used campnab.com to not have to refresh the page all the time while cycling.

Luggage Storage: The welcome center has lockers in the restrooms. We paid 3 CAD per day (24 hours) and a deposit of 30 CAD per locker. They didn’t seem to be used to renting the lockers, so the whole process took some time. The downside of this is the fact that you can only retrieve your things during opening hours, which were 8am to 4pm as of August 2025. But doable, and valuables and extra food are safe.

Bike Storage: We cycled to the first campground, Kinney Lake, and hiked from there. You might get away with locking the bikes at the welcome center as well – we asked but they did not exactly agreed on that and kept telling us that it’s a nice ride to Kinney Lake. The ride is quite technical and steep in parts though, and we pushed them quite a bit. Especially on loaded (touring) bikes, it is not much faster than walking. It’s an advantage for the return though (:

Our first longer off-bike adventure was about to start! The two biggest logistical problems when bikepacking is – what to do with the bikes, and what to do with the stuff that’s not needed on the hike? We didn’t have a car to just lock everything in, like nearly everybody else. Fortunately for us the welcome center had lockers, where we could lock our valuables, food and everything we wouldn’t need over the next few days. We were a little bit concerned about the moisture on and in all our things as nothing had dried the last night, but that was our only option.
After stashing everything in the lockers, we cycled towards the trailhead. The first seven km of the hike up to Kinney Lake Campground were open to bikes and apparently “nice to cycle”. We were not the only ones fooled by that information! It included stretches of hike a bike and we were not noticeably faster than the hikers… We stored the bikes somewhere in the bushes near the Kinney Lake campground and started our hike towards the Berg Lake Campground.

Day 1: 16.12 km | 859 m elevation gain

Somehow we had managed to pack everything we needed in some bags and were able to carry it up the trail. We didn’t have proper backpacks and had to make it work with a small foldable backpack each and a lot of dry bags. Needless to say we must have looked quite ridiculous!

It was raining lightly every now and then, but it wasn’t too bad. The trail was beautiful, with impressive waterfalls on the way. We got to the campsite early in the evening and scored a tent pad close to the shelter, bear lockers and trail. Only the toilet was a bit hidden in the woods! The campground was on the shore of the Berg Lake, opposite of the Berg Lake glacier. What a view! We pitched our tent and spent the evening in the cozy shelter, cooking and eating dinner and writing in our journal.

Day 2: 22.12 km | 1008 m elevation gain

For the next day we had planned to hike the most famous day hike from here, the Snowbird Pass. After walking alongside the Robson River for a while, we suddenly had amazing views of the Robson Glacier.

We scrambled uphill for some time and walked through beautiful meadows. We saw lots of chipmunks and a few marmots. After around ten km we reached the final part and when we made it to the top of the ridge we stood in front of the huge and impressive Reef Icefield. I have never seen an Icefield that close (if at all?) and it seemed endless!
On our way back to the campground we saw three mountain goats and even more chipmunks.

Day 3: 14.02 km | 193 m elevation gain

The third day was our last one and that meant descending back to the Welcome Center. We had to make it to the welcome center before 4 pm to be able to access the locker and get our gear and food back. While having breakfast, a family of five started talking to us, they were super interested in our trip and just lovely to talk with.
We started hiking at around 09:30. Even though we ate nearly all our food and the luggage was significantly less, it was still fairly annoying to not have a proper bag. But I wouldn’t wanna miss things like this, only because I am traveling by bike! Who knows when or if we would come back?

We arrived at Kinney Lake around 2 pm and were reunited with our bikes. A short snack break later we started the ride towards the trailhead. Despite the hike a bike sections, we were a lot faster than hiking this time. At least for the return it was nice to have the bikes here. An older couple on equally old bikes crossed us and we were wondering if they knew about the trail conditions ahead…

We made it to the welcome center in time. Our bags smelled like expected after three days without fresh air and after a nice burger we hurried to the campground to air everything out. The next laundry was desperately needed! At least it stopped raining for once.