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.
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.
More Whistler & Garibaldi Park Hiking A to Z!
Alpine Zone or Alpine Tundra is the area above the treeline, often characterized by stunted, sparse forests of krummholz and pristine, turquoise lakes. Mount ...
Neal Carter (14 Dec 1902 – 15 Mar 1978) was a mountaineer and early explorer of the Coast Mountains primarily in the 1920’s and 1930’s. Astoundingly skilled as a ...
Charles Townsend (1900-1997) moved from London, England to Vancouver in the early 1920's where he met Neal Carter while studying Agriculture at UBC. Townsend was ...
Columnar Jointing: bizarre looking columns of oddly angular rock formations that can be found in many places around Whistler and worldwide. Generally ...
The Table is an extraordinary flat-topped mountain located in Garibaldi Park just one kilometre south of Garibaldi Lake. Sometimes reflexively referred to as ...
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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 ...
Whistler has an absurd number of wonderful and free hiking trails and Parkhurst Ghost Town certainly ranks as the most unusual and interesting. Parkhurst was a little logging town perched on the edge of Green ...
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 ...
The Sea to Sky Trail is a 180 kilometre multi-use trail that runs from Squamish to D'Arcy. The trail is still under construction in many parts, however, the amazing route through Whistler is finally in ...
Ancient Cedars is a nice, easy/moderate 2.5 kilometre (1.6 mile) hiking trail on the far side of Cougar Mountain, just 13.1 kilometres north of Whistler Village. A small, untouched grove of huge western ...
April in Whistler is a wonderful time of year. The winter deep freeze ends and T-shirt weather erupts. The village comes alive with overflowing patios and ...
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). ...
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 ...
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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 ...
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.
Alexander Falls 
Ancient Cedars 
Black Tusk 
Blackcomb Mountain 
Cheakamus River 
Cirque Lake 
Sproatt East 
Wedgemount Lake 
January 
March 
June 
September 
