High Tourism Potential
Cougar Mountain Cedar over 12 meters in Circumference Photo credit: Joe Foy
Don Martin runs a thriving wilderness tourism business out of Whistler. His success is based, to a large extent, on the virgin forests of Cougar Mountain. Don reports that over the last six months he has taken over 900 paying customers to view the big tree grove there. More than ninety percent of these people were foreign tourists and it's a sure bet that they patronized many a Whistler business.
To date no less than six Japanese magazine articles and one Japanese television program have been done on the Cougar Mountain tour.
Other operators have expressed interest in the Rainbow Wilderness Madeley Lakes area. These Whistler entrepreneurs are the cutting edge of the fastest growing sector of B.C.s second largest industry, wilderness tourism.
It was a strong commercial tourism and conservationist lobby that created Canada's first National Park, Banff. A similar teaming up of commercial and non-commercial interests could give the Lower Mainland its first Forest Service Preserved Wilderness, Rainbow-Cougar.
