Spring Hiking Has Arrived!
Spring is here and summer is not far off! The road to Parkhurst Ghost Town is accessible now! Whistler Train Wreck is free of snow too. Check out Hike in Whistler May 2022 for inspiration!
When you hike in the alpine in Whistler and Garibaldi Provincial Park, you will often encounter unbelievably hardy and sometimes mangled looking trees. Weathering high winds, freezing temperatures, deep snow and usually growing where most other things can't. These weather battered trees are called krummholz. Krummholz is a German derived word that comes from two words, krumm and holz. Krumm means bent, crooked, twisted and holz means wood.
Whistler & Garibaldi Hiking
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 
Sproatt East Sproatt West Taylor Meadows Train Wreck 
Wedgemount Lake Whistler Mountain
January February 
March April May 
June July August 
September October November December
The lodgepole pine is commonly found in the alpine regions around Whistler. There are many other types of trees that are known to form into bizarre krummholz trees, including spruce, mountain pine, balsam fir, subalpine fir and limber pine. The krummholz tree pictured here is on a cliff above Cirque Lake in the Callaghan Valley. A tremendously hostile place to live in the winter months, however, during the summer Cirque Lake is a tranquil paradise. Most krummholz trees you will see will be found growing out of a rocky landscape with just a thin layer of dirt. Often they have a short, yet very solid shape, pushing the bedrock apart as they grow. Other common krummholz trees form into a flag shape, where high winds have blasted the branches so they form on one side only. Regardless of the shape of krummholz trees, they always appear to have lived through brutal winters in improbable locations. This krummholz tree pictured below is growing out of a rocky island, one of the Battleship Islands in Garibaldi Lake, Garibaldi Provincial Park.
Below are examples of krummholz trees at Brew Lake, Garibaldi Lake and Brandywine Meadows. The Brew Lake krummholz on the bottom left is a great example of a twisted, mangled looking krummholz. The centre picture from Garibaldi Lake shows two, much older, weather battered krummholz trees at the shore of the lake. And the right side picture shows krummholz trees with the characteristic flag shape at Brandywine Meadows with Mount Garibaldi in the distance.
Garibaldi Park Wildlife & History
Plants of the Whistler Region is an excellent book that includes great pictures and descriptions of most trees you will find in Whistler. Small enough to fit in your pocket and comprehensive enough to identify most things you will encounter growing in the forests of Whistler. Along with conifer trees and broadleaf trees the book has chapters on flowers, berries, ferns and shrubs. You can find Plants of the Whistler Region on Amazon, the Whistler Library and at Armchair Books in Whistler Village. The author Collin Varner has a wonderful series of Plants of.. books on various regions beyond Whistler. Plants of Vancouver and the Lower Mainland, Plants of the Gulf and San Juan Islands and Southern Vancouver Island, and Plants of the West Coast Trail. In the last couple years he has started a new series of books. The Flora and Fauna of Coastal British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest and Edible and Medicinal Flora of the West Coast: British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest. A Passion for Mountains by Kathryn Bridge is a fascinating look at Don and Phyllis Munday's prolific exploration of the mountains in BC. Based out of Vancouver, they were dominant figures of the climbing community in the early 1900's. In 1923 they visited their friend Neal Carter in Alta Lake(Whistler) and explored the mountains around the valley.. many for the first time!
When hiking to Parkhurst Ghost Town, the first area you will encounter after you cross the disintegrating bridge over Wedge Creek is the wye. In railroad ...
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Corrie Lake is the surreal looking lake that can be seen across the valley from Whistler Mountain. While hiking the High Note trail along Whistler ...
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Bergschrund or abbreviated schrund: a crevasse that forms from the separation of moving glacier ice from the stagnant ice above. Characterized by a deep ...
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The rocky and narrow row of islands in Garibaldi Lake just offshore from the Garibaldi Lake campsite are known as Battleship Islands. Named by the ...
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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 ...
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Rainbow Lodge was a popular wilderness lodge in the small community called Alta Lake, and what would eventually be called Whistler It was a fishing and ...
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The Rubble Creek trailhead is the main access point for many of the best hikes and sights in Garibaldi Provincial Park. Rubble Creek is located midway ...
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The second Caterpillar tractor in Parkhurst Ghost Town is considerably harder to find despite being just a few metres from the hulking Caterpillar at the shore ...
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June is a pretty amazing month to hike in Whistler. The average low and high temperatures in Whistler range from 9c to 21c(48f/70f). The summer tourist ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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. ...
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Whistler & Garibaldi Hiking
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 Sproatt East Sproatt West Taylor Meadows Train Wreck Wedgemount Lake Whistler Mountain
January February March April May June July August September October November December
The Sproatt East trail is a beautifully wild, steep, but relatively short trail to the magnificent, wide open alpine and summit of Mount Sproatt. Mount Sproatt (1834 metres) towers over Whistler Valley ...
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Keyhole Hot Springs (aka Pebble Creek Hot Springs) is located 100 kilometres from Whistler (Village Gate Blvd). Closed from Apr 1- Nov 15 due to Grizzly Bears habituated to humans in the area. Though most of the ...
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Black Tusk is the extraordinarily iconic and appropriately named mountain that can be seen from almost everywhere in Whistler. The massive black spire of crumbling rock juts out of the earth in an incredibly ...
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Cheakamus River is a beautiful, crashing, turquoise coloured river that flows from Cheakamus Lake, through Whistler Interpretive Forest at Cheakamus Crossing, then down past Brandywine Falls to Daisy Lake. ...
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