Ziptrek Ecotours

Minimizing Environmental Impacts

Most of a guest’s time at Ziptrek is spent learning about minimizing environmental impacts so we ourselves are a little obsessed with the subject. Every detail of Ziptrek, from construction to ongoing operations, has been carefully planned and designed to minimize environmental impact.

We are working in some of the rarest, most endangered forest on earth (for example, there are 36 acres of intact Amazon rain forest left for every 1 acre of intact coastal temperate rainforest). We partnered with Dr. Reese Halter of Global Forest Science and Mr. Robert Steele, M.Sc. P. Eng. (Structural) to develop the lowest environmental impact designs possible for bringing visitors into this pristine ancient forest without in anyway harming the place or the trees.

The designs that resulted are so low impact that visitor’s feet don’t even touch the ground. Guests stand on Cedar Tree decks 20 stories above the ground in giant ancient Douglas Firs, Cedars, and Balsams. In places, elegant suspension bridges which fully meet the National Design Code of Canada for pedestrian bridges, transport people hundreds of feet above the ground through the forest canopy.

The bridges and decks are made from local red cedar which was selected in order to minimize the environmental impact of the project. Every year Ziptrek plants hundreds of trees to more than replace those that we have used.

To cross larger distances, we used one of the most efficient structures on earth, a single steel cable, for our ziplines. When a guest travels on a zipline or walks across a bridge their transportation generates no emissions and does not in any way harm the delicate forest ecosystem surrounding them.

Ziptrek generates all of the electricity we use on the mountain by ourselves without producing a single molecule of carbon dioxide. We produce enough power to light up all of the canopy walk suspension bridges with over 8,000 LED lights and to always have more than 3,500 watts of power on tap in our three-story mountain base building for lights, computers and power tools.

We partnered closely with a BC Company called Xantrex which is a global leader in renewable power systems. Our Xantrex-powered system is on display and we use it make the idea of renewable energy less foreign to our guests.  An 8 inch wide by 13 inch long micro-hydro generator in the creek that separates Whistler and Blackcomb mountains feeds a sophisticated power system in the building which stores and delivers power as needed.  All of the lighting used is compact fluorescent or LED.

Ziptrek was one of the first companies in the world to have gas-electric hybrid vehicles. We ordered 2 of the world’s first four wheel drive hybrids as soon as they were announced in an effort to even further reduce our carbon emissions. The new vehicles produce 50% less carbon dioxide and 92% less smog forming emissions than the non-hybrid version of the same vehicle. These two hybrids mark the beginning of a process which will eventually see all of our vehicles converted to hybrids.

Every year we carefully calculate the carbon we emit from all our vehicles and from the propane we use for heat, in order to figure out how many hundreds of trees to plant that year to offset the carbon dioxide we produce.