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 ...
Logger’s Lake is an amazing little lake hidden up in the deep forest above the more well known Cheakamus River. The lake, almost unbelievably exists in a ...
Fitzsimmons Creek is the beautiful and huge creek that crashes through Whistler Village. When walking from Whistler Village to the Upper Village, you will cross ...
Hoary Marmots are the cute, pudgy, twenty plus pound ground squirrels that have evolved to live quite happily in the hostile alpine areas around Whistler. ...
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 ...
Western redcedar is a very large tree commonly found in the Pacific Northwest. Frequently growing up to 70 metres and with a trunk diameter of 7 metres, ...
Cairns, inukshuks or inuksuks are a pile or arrangement of rocks used to indicate a route, landmark or a summit. The word cairn originates from the ...
Porteau Cove is a beautiful little stop on the drive to or from Whistler. You will notice the lack of convenient washroom stops on the way to or from ...
The pale green shub-like growths hanging from trees in the forests around Whistler is called usnea. These bushy, coral-like fruticose lichens anchor to bark ...
The Table is an extraordinary flat-topped mountain located in Garibaldi Park just one kilometre south of Garibaldi Lake. Sometimes reflexively referred to as ...
September hiking in Whistler is possibly the best month of all. The snow has melted far up to the mountain tops, yet the temperatures are still quite high. ...
Hiking in Whistler in October is often unexpectedly stunning. The days are much shorter and colder but the mountains are alive with colour from the fall ...
November in Whistler is when the temperatures plummet and the first heavy snow falls in the alpine and often in Whistler Village. The hiking opportunities become ...
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 ...
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 ...