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 make your own trail through the forest by whacking or cutting your way through the bush. A bushwhacker is a term sometimes used to describe someone who spends a lot of time in the wilderness. Bushwhacking is also usually needed to plot a new trail through deep forest.
Alexander Falls 
Ancient Cedars 
Black Tusk 
Blackcomb Mountain Brandywine Falls Brandywine Meadows Brew Lake Callaghan Lake Cheakamus Lake 
Cheakamus River 
Cirque Lake Flank Trail Garibaldi Lake Garibaldi Park Helm Creek Jane Lakes Joffre Lakes Keyhole Hot Springs Logger’s Lake Madeley Lake Meager Hot Springs Nairn Falls Newt Lake Panorama Ridge Parkhurst Ghost Town Rainbow Falls Rainbow Lake Ring Lake Russet Lake Sea to Sky Trail Skookumchuck Hot Springs Sloquet Hot Springs Mount Sproatt Taylor Meadows Train Wreck 
Wedgemount Lake Whistler Mountain
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In Whistler and Garibaldi Provincial Park, some degree of bushwhacking is often needed in the springtime due to fallen trees blocking trails. These deadfall trees are often so large as to permanently alter trails. The Cheakamus Lake trail has several enormous deadfall trees that were so big that it was evidently found to be easier to reroute the trail than to chainsaw and move them. This is especially the case when a huge tree falls in line with a trail and covers the trail for several dozen metres. The tree would have to be cut in many sections and hauled away. Adjusting the trail to pass alongside the tree is frequently the easier solution. Huge trees that fall across a trail can simply have one section cut out unblock the trail. You see this a lot on the Cheakamus Lake trail as well and because the trees there are quite large, the new deadfall trail adjustments are particularly impressive. Deadfall is a fairly general term for dead and fallen trees, however there are slightly more specific terms to describe fallen trees based on how they fell. A tree that falls with it roots is called a blowdown or windthrow. Even a modest sized tree can pull out an impressive wall of roots, dirt and rocks a couple metres high, and the crater they rip open is similarly huge.
The picture shown here below is a massive deadfall tree on the Cheakamus Lake Trail that caused the trail to be redirected around it a few years ago. The Cheakamus Lake trailhead is found at the south end of Whistler 8 kilometres up a bumpy logging road that starts in Cheakamus Crossing. Cheakamus Lake is one of several beautiful hikes in Garibaldi Park in Whistler.
Wedgemount Lake is found at the opposite end of Whistler and also in Garibaldi Provincial Park. The short but steep 7 kilometre trail to Wedgemount Lake is crisscrossed with plenty of deadfall in the spring after winter storms have toppled trees.
Another specific type of deadfall is known as windsnap. These are trees that break apart somewhere along the trunk and leave the roots and some of the trunk intact. Seeing these in the forest is always an impressive sight, owing to the tremendous strain that the tree must have been under in order to break along its massive trunk. In a large diameter tree recently broken, the remaining stump will often have a jagged crown of spears pointing to the sky. Other examples of windsnap you often see in Whistler will have twisted apart and left a bizarre spiral pattern in the mangled stump.
This impressive example of windsnap can be found along the Parkhurst Trail and appears to have snapped and fallen back onto its trunk. Parkhurst Ghost Town is located near the north end of Green Lake in Whistler and several nice trails lead to the old logging town abandoned in 1956.
In the winter months heavy snow can weigh down branches and bushes, drastically narrowing trails. A normally wide trail can become a narrow corridor hemmed in by heavy snow-laden bushes. This is the usually wide Parkhurst Trail after just a few centimetres of snow.
The Newt Lake Trail which extends from the Ancient Cedars Trail usually involves a bit of bushwhacking. The trail is not well known and the wild terrain up on Cougar Mountain means that every winter leaves considerable deadfall along the trail. The picture shown here is near the start of the Newt Lake Trail and is a common sight along this rough, but beautiful hike in Whistler.
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Alexander Falls Ancient Cedars Black Tusk Blackcomb Mountain Brandywine Falls Brandywine Meadows Brew Lake Callaghan Lake Cheakamus Lake Cheakamus River Cirque Lake Flank Trail Garibaldi Lake Garibaldi Park Helm Creek Jane Lakes Joffre Lakes Keyhole Hot Springs Logger’s Lake Madeley Lake Meager Hot Springs Nairn Falls Newt Lake Panorama Ridge Parkhurst Ghost Town Rainbow Falls Rainbow Lake Ring Lake Russet Lake Sea to Sky Trail Skookumchuck Hot Springs Sloquet Hot Springs Mount Sproatt Taylor Meadows Train Wreck Wedgemount Lake Whistler Mountain
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