Cheakamus Lake is stunning with its extraordinarily brilliant colour, while Blackcomb's view of Whistler Mountain is magnificent. Three aspects of the Blackcomb Mountain trails make it truly wonderful. First, the trail itself takes you through truck sized boulders and weather brutalized krummholz trees. Often you find yourself marvelling at the trail bending around enormous erratics that appear to have been placed their out of nowhere. Short, thick, mangled looking trees grow in the most improbable places. Between giant boulders or on ground that appears to be solid rock. The second astoundingly beautiful feature of the Blackcomb Mountain trails appears quite suddenly along the Overlord trail, when Overlord Glacier, Overlord Mountain and The Fissile come into view all at once. No one expects such a close up view of the glacier or how menacingly huge it is. A mass of white glacier comes into perspective when you make out the thousands of crevasses that each must be big enough to swallow a car. From this distance crevasses pack together so tightly as the make the glacier appear grey. These crevasse lines extend up to to pure white, then finally the stark black rock at the top of Overlord Mountain or the surreal red of The Fissile. The third aspect of Blackcomb Mountain that makes it truly wonderful is its astoundingly easy access to remote feeling alpine areas. A short and relatively easy hike up the valley next to Decker Mountain brings you to an extraordinary alpine world flanked by Spearhead Glacier and Decker Glacier. The scenery is magnificent and the serenity is unbroken by the throngs of tourists that pack close to the short and easy trails nearer to civilization.
Brandywine Falls Provincial Park is a very convenient stop along the Sea to Sky Highway on the way to or from Whistler. The falls spill over an abrupt 70 ...
Blackcomb Mountain is much less known for its hiking trails than Whistler Mountain. It is hard to compare the two mountains hiking trails as they are so ...
The Table is an extraordinary flat-topped mountain located in Garibaldi Park just one kilometre south of Garibaldi Lake. Sometimes reflexively referred to as ...
Whistler can be expensive. Everything worth doing seems to cost a lot of money. But if you step back from the noise and crowds you may spot some secret ...
Arête: a thin ridge of rock formed by two glaciers parallel to each other. Sometimes formed from two cirques meeting. From the French for edge or ridge. Around ...
The Garibaldi Volcanic Belt is a line of mostly dormant stratovolcanoes and subglacial volcanoes largely centred around Whistler and extending through much ...
Coast Douglas-fir trees are medium to extremely large trees that you will encounter in Whistler and Garibaldi Park. They are the second tallest conifer ...
Col: a ridge between two higher peaks, a mountain pass or saddle. More specifically is the lowest point on a mountain ridge between two peaks. Sometimes ...
Bergschrund or abbreviated schrund: a crevasse that forms from the separation of moving glacier ice from the stagnant ice above. Characterized by a deep ...
Mills Winram was a very active mountaineer from Vancouver with some very notable ascents in the 1920's and 1930's. He, along with Fred Parkes and Stan ...
December hiking in Whistler is mainly done on snowshoes, though not always. If it hasn't snowed much recently then trails such as Whistler Train Wreck and ...
February is a great month for snowshoeing in Whistler and Garibaldi Park. The days slowly get longer, but the temperatures stay consistently cold. Expect ...
March is usually a snowy month in Whistler, though in 2024 not a whole lot of snow has fallen. Snowshoes are already not necessary for lots of trails in and ...
Hiking in Whistler is spectacular and wonderfully varied. Looking at a map of Whistler you see an extraordinary spider web of hiking trails that are unbelievably numerous. Easy trails, moderate trails and challenging hiking trails are all available. Another marvellous ...
Squamish is located in the midst of a staggering array of amazing hiking trails. Garibaldi Provincial Park sprawls alongside Squamish and up and beyond Whistler. Tantalus Provincial Park lays across the valley to the west and the wonderfully remote Callaghan Valley ...
Clayoquot Sound has a staggering array of hiking trails within it. Between Tofino and Ucluelet, Pacific Rim Park has several wilderness and beach trails, each one radically different from the last. The islands in the area are often Provincial parks on their own with ...
Victoria has a seemingly endless number of amazing hiking trails. Most take you to wild and beautiful Pacific Ocean views and others take you to tranquil lakes in beautiful BC Coastal Rainforest wilderness. Regional Parks and Provincial Parks are everywhere you turn in ...
The West Coast Trail was created after decades of brutal and costly shipwrecks occurred along the West Coast of Vancouver Island. One shipwreck in particular was so horrific, tragic and unbelievable that it forced the creation of a trail along the coast, which ...