Joffre Lakes Provincial Park is a gorgeous park with extraordinarily coloured lakes, waterfalls, stunning mountain peaks and ominous glaciers pouring into the valley. Joffre Lakes is one of those incredible places that makes it hard to take a boring picture. The three Joffre Lakes are some of the most stunning lakes you are likely to ever see.
Each lake gets progressively more beautiful and impossibly turquoise from one to the next. By the third lake the intense colour is breathtaking. The mighty Matier Glacier rises above and beyond the third lake, making the experience even more spectacular with such a looming presence. Located an hours drive north of Whistler in the vast wilderness of mountains split by the Duffy Lake Road. Expect to take an hour to drive the 61 kilometres to the trailhead. There are three lakes in Joffre Lakes Provincial Park and all of them beautiful on their own. The first lake, Lower Joffre Lake is just steps from the parking lot/trailhead and the views are already fantastic. It has a wonderful turquoise colour that comes from light reflecting off particles of rock suspended in the glacier meltwater. The lake is surrounded by pristine wilderness of uniformly idyllic trees. Looking across the lake, two mountains frame a distant glacier, which looks strangely close and ominously huge. It is the Matier Glacier which fills the steep valley above the third of the Joffre Lakes, Upper Joffre Lake, and marks the end of the trail that you just started. Partway between Lower Joffre Lake and Upper Joffre Lake is Middle Joffre Lake. More details, directions and maps for Joffre Lakes.
Wedgemount Lake itself is a magnificent destination for a day hike or spectacular overnight beneath the dazzling mountain peaks and stars above Garibaldi ...
Mount Sproatt, or as it is known locally as just Sproatt, is one of the many towering mountains visible from Whistler Village. Above and beyond Alta ...
Joffre Lakes Provincial Park is a gorgeous park with extraordinarily coloured lakes, waterfalls, stunning mountain peaks and ominous glaciers pouring into ...
Bergschrund or abbreviated schrund: a crevasse that forms from the separation of moving glacier ice from the stagnant ice above. Characterized by a deep ...
Green Lake is the marvellously vivid, green coloured lake just north of Whistler Village. Driving north on the Sea to Sky Highway, Green Lake appears ...
Mountain hemlock is a species of hemlock that thrives along the west coast of North America from Alaska to California. In Whistler and Garibaldi Park you ...
Chimney: a gap between two vertical faces of rock or ice. Often a chimney offers the only viable route to the summit of a mountain. An example of this is Black ...
Bushwhack is a term often used in Canada and the United States to refer to hiking off-trail where no trail exists. Literally means 'bush' and 'whack'. To ...
Alpine Zone or Alpine Tundra is the area above the treeline, often characterized by stunted, sparse forests of krummholz and pristine, turquoise lakes. Mount ...
The Green Lake Loop is the original trail that runs around the back side of Green Lake. Before the Sea to Sky Highway was cut through the valley in 1964, ...
May is an extraordinarily beautiful time of year in Whistler. The days are longer and warmer and a great lull in between seasons happens. Whistler is fairly quiet ...
June is a pretty amazing month to hike in Whistler and Garibaldi Park. The average low and high temperatures in Whistler range from 9c to 21c(48f/70f). ...
July is a wonderful time to hike in Whistler and Garibaldi Provincial Park. The weather is beautiful and the snow on high elevation hiking trails is long ...
August hiking in Whistler definitely has the most consistently great, hot weather. You can feel the rare pleasure of walking across a glacier shirtless 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 ...