When Did the Malahat Skywalk Open?
A young attraction with a real backstory. Here is exactly when the Skywalk opened, who built it, on whose land, and what they set out to make.
When did the Malahat Skywalk open?
The Malahat Skywalk opened on July 15, 2021. It was built by Malahat SkyWalk Corp. in partnership with the Malahat Nation, a Coast Salish community, on the Nation's traditional and ancestral territory north of Victoria on Vancouver Island. The project cost roughly $17 million.
The opening landed in the summer of 2021, an unusual time to launch a major attraction given everything happening in travel that year. It has run year-round ever since, closing only on Christmas Day and for a short annual maintenance window, and in a short time it became one of the most recognizable stops on the drive up the island.
For a structure that now feels like a fixture of the Malahat highway, it is genuinely young. Anyone who visited Vancouver Island before mid-2021 would not have seen it at all. The site sits at 901 Trans-Canada Highway in Malahat, about a 35-minute drive north of downtown Victoria, on the forested slope above Saanich Inlet.
Who built it, and on whose land
The operator is Malahat SkyWalk Corp., a British Columbia company, and it developed the attraction in partnership with the Malahat Nation. The Skywalk stands on the Nation's traditional and ancestral territory, so the partnership is central to the project rather than a footnote to it.
The roughly $17 million build was a significant investment for a single attraction, and the partnership with the Malahat Nation is part of what makes the site notable. The Nation is a Coast Salish Indigenous community, and the Skywalk sits on land tied to its history, which the project acknowledges directly. That relationship is woven into how the place presents itself, from the welcome you get on arrival to the way the forest setting is treated as something to protect rather than simply build on.
Framing it as a partnership, not just a development, also helps explain the ambition of the finished structure. A $17 million spiral tower described as the first of its kind in the province is not the kind of thing that goes up on a whim, and the collaboration behind it is a large part of why it reads as a landmark rather than a roadside stop.
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Opened | July 15, 2021 |
| Operator | Malahat SkyWalk Corp. (British Columbia) |
| Partner | Malahat Nation (Coast Salish) |
| Build cost | Roughly $17 million |
| Location | 901 Trans-Canada Highway, Malahat, BC |
What they set out to build
The design pairs a 600 metre wooden treetop walkway through arbutus and Douglas fir with a 10-storey spiral tower whose lookout sits about 250 metres above sea level. The route up is a gentle ramp, not stairs or an elevator, so it was meant to be walked or rolled by nearly everyone.
The intent was an attraction that almost anyone could complete, not just the fit and fearless. The walkway climbs slowly through the canopy, rising about 20 metres, and the tower continues that easy grade all the way to the top. Built from glulam columns tied together with hot-dip galvanized steel, the structure used around 300 tons of steel and was billed as the first of its kind in British Columbia. Rather than an elevator, the top is reached by a winding ramp of roughly 600 metres, with a central spiral staircase tucked in the core purely for emergency exit.
The result is a lookout that clears the treetops and opens onto Saanich Inlet, the surrounding hills and, on a clear day, the Olympic Mountains to the south. That reach for the view, paired with a step-free route, was the design brief in a sentence.
Then came the fun. A spiral slide of about 20 metres gives visitors a fast way back down, a suspended net floats inside the tower core, and a glass-floored cube called the Overhang pushes out past the tower's edge for those who want a jolt. If you want the full walk-through of those features, see our guide to the tower, spiral slide and adventure net.
How it's held up since 2021
Since opening in 2021 the Skywalk has become one of Vancouver Island's busiest paid attractions, open year-round apart from Christmas Day and a short annual maintenance window. Reviews run strongly positive, rated around 4.7 out of 5 on Google, with the main debate being price rather than the experience itself.
A few years in, the verdict from visitors is mostly warm. The views over Saanich Inlet and toward the Olympic Mountains earn consistent praise, and the slide is a reliable hit with kids. The recurring gripe is cost, and some reviewers who skip the slide feel the ticket runs high, a fair debate we weigh in our honest look at whether the Skywalk is worth the ticket price.
Practically, it is easy to fold into an island trip. The gates open at 9:00 am, last-ticket times shift with the seasons from early evening in summer to mid-afternoon in winter, and a typical visit runs about 90 minutes on an all-day ticket. Malahat Skywalk Tickets can be bought online before you arrive, which saves standing at the gate on a busy summer day. If you are still mapping the logistics, our notes on getting there from Victoria cover the roughly half-hour drive north.
