With it's paved, plowed road to 875m Whistler Olympic Park offers some of the quickest access to good backcountry ski terrain in the Sea to Sky Corridor.  The Hanging Lake trail climbs directly up from the cross country ski area through open forest and meadows to the subalpine bowl around Hanging Lake.  The ski terrain is excellent on all aspects with lots of options for intermediate through expert skiers.  Rainbow Mountain is not much farther and it can be done as a moderate day trip using the Hanging Lake trail as the approach.

Recently, 5 large blowdowns fell down on the lower part of the trail.  They are far to big for me to remove safely, so this trip will clear a reroute to avoid them completely.  I scouted the proposed reroute on Saturday October 9th.  It's a little over 100m long, and covered mainly with small dense trees 1-3" in diameter as well as a few larger ones, but nothing particular large or dangerous the needs to come down.  It's a short hike of only 500m to reach the work site along a cleared trail with no footbed.  The ground in the section is generally well drained, as is the reroute.  Altogether, I think these factors make it a suitable trip for families with kids to join.  My own kids are 6 and 9 years old.  Of course, you don't need to have kids to bring along in order to join this trip.

The best tools for younger kids are 2 handed loppers, as these naturally keep fingers away from the cutting blades when used with both hands.  There's lots of this kind of stuff for the kids to do on this section.  Older more responsible kids can use pruning saws or pole pruners.  I will have a chainsaw along but no kids will be allowed anywhere near it while it is running.

More information on the Hanging Lake trail can be found here: http://www.ubc-voc.com/wiki/Gin_Peak