Whistler's Cultural Gems: Audain Art Museum, Squamish Lil'wat Cultural Centre & Vallea Lumina

Two of the finest architectural and cultural institutions in Western Canada sit just a 10-minute forest walk apart along the bridge between Whistler Village and the Upper Village, celebrating the artistic legacy of British Columbia and the two First Nations who have stewarded these mountains since time immemorial.

1. The Audain Art Museum (4350 Blackcomb Way, 3 Mins' Walk from Olympic Plaza)

Designed by Vancouver's celebrated Patkau Architects as a sleek, black-metal bridge elevated a full storey on stilts above the seasonal floodplain of Fitzsimmons Creek through a grove of towering spruce trees, the Audain Art Museum houses the private collection of philanthropists Michael Audain and Yoshiko Karasawa:

• The 19th-Century Northwest Coast Masks & James Hart's 'The Dance Screen': right inside the sunlit entrance gallery stands Haida master carver Chief James Hart's (7idansuu) monumental 5-metre carved red-cedar Dance Screen (The Scream Too) inlaid with abalone shell and copper, leading into a dramatic darkened gallery of 19th-century Haida, Kwakwaka'wakw, Tsimshian and Nuu-chah-nulth ceremonial transformation masks.
• The Emily Carr Gallery: features one of Canada's largest permanent rooms of modernist canvases by Victoria-born artist Emily Carr (1871 to 1945) alongside contemporary BC masters (Jeff Wall, E.J. Hughes, Dana Claxton and Gordon Smith).

2. The Squamish Lil'wat Cultural Centre (SLCC, 45840 Lorimer Rd in the Upper Village)

Opened in 2008 as the first centre in history created jointly by two distinct First Nations, the coastal Squamish Nation (Sḵwx̱wú7mesh) and the interior Lil'wat Nation (Líl̓wat7úl), the SLCC is designed to evoke a traditional Squamish Longhouse and a Lil'wat Istken (earthen pit house):

• Hourly Guided Tour, Hand-Drum Welcome & Thunderbird Café: join the hourly tour starting with a live Welcome Song on cedar hand-drums, inspect a 12-metre hand-carved red-cedar ocean canoe and woven cedar regalia, and eat warm Indigenous Bannock bread, smoked wild salmon chowder and Saskatoon-berry venison on the forest deck of the Thunderbird Café.

3. After Dark: 'Vallea Lumina' Multimedia Night Walk (At Cougar Mountain)

Ten minutes north of the village (free shuttle from the Gondola Transit Exchange), walk a 1.5-kilometre illuminated old-growth forest trail after sunset where lasers, projection-mapping, glowing orbs and an original musical score bring the legend of two long-ago Whistler hikers to life among 400-year-old trees.