Adit Lakes - Hike in Whistler Glossary

Russet Lake sits in a wide, glacier carved valley at the base of The Fissile. In the direction opposite The Fissile, up on a plateau less than a kilometre away are two small tarns called Adit Lakes. Adit Lakes sit in a broad, boulder strewn alpine zone with an incredible view of Spearhead Range. Just a few metres from Adit Lakes the plateau drops off quickly into the huge valley that separates the Spearhead Range and Fitzsimmons Range.

Whistler & Garibaldi Park

Ablation Zone Accumulation Zone Adit Lakes Aiguille Alpine Zone Arête ARRTI Armchair Glacier The Barrier Battleship Islands Bears Bench Bergschrund Bivouac Cairn/Inukshuk Carter Chimney Cirque Cloudraker Coast Mountains Cordilleran Cornice Corrie Lake Crevasse Dalgleish Deadfall Emerald Forest Erratic The Fissile Fitzsimmons Creek Fitzsimmons Range Fyles Garibaldi Ranges Garibaldi Volcanic Belt Gemel Glacier Window Green Lake Hoary Marmot Krummholz Lithophyte Moraine Mt Garibaldi Mt James Turner Northair Mine Nunatuk Overlord Peak 2 Peak Roundhouse Rubble Creek Scree Spearhead Range Tarn The Table Townsend Usnea Winram

January February March April May June July August September October November December

The Spearhead Range is named for its jagged array of spearhead shaped peaks that extend to include Blackcomb Mountain. Adit Lakes sit on a plateau in Fitzsimmons Range. From Adit Lakes you can look across the Musical Bumps all the way to the summit of Whistler Mountain. Musical Bumps is the collective name for the series of broad mountain peaks that have musical names. Viewed from Adit Lakes are Oboe Summit, Flute Summit and Piccolo Summit. The Singing Pass trail connects from the Musical Bumps trail and takes you down the valley between Whistler Mountain and Blackcomb Mountain to Whistler Village. The Singing Pass trail runs parallel to Fitzsimmons Creek which Adit Lakes drain into via Adit Creek. Fitzsimmons Creek is named after Jimmy Fitzsimmons who had a small cabin down in the valley near Fitzsimmons Creek. He was a miner that had a mining claim and hoped to find the other end of the copper vein that the Britannia Mine, opened in 1914, sat on. Adit Lakes are evidently named after the word miners use to describe a horizontal mine used to explore for mineral veins. The word adit comes from the latin aditus, which means entrance. Adits are dug into mountain ridges in the hopes of hitting the mineral vein or lode. Fitzsimmons was cutting adits here in the hopes of finding a vein of copper embedded between layers of rock. There are no visible traces of mining around Adit Lakes, but a few kilometres down the Singing Pass trail you can find remnants of old mine shafts. Little is known about Jimmy Fitzsimmons other than a picture of him from Myrtle Phillip's collection at the Whistler Museum, thought to have been taken in 1916 outside Rainbow Lodge. On the back of the photo is written, "Around 1916, Bill Holloway prospector, Jimmy Fitzsimmons of Fitzsimmons mine. Bill Bailiff, Bill MacDermott, Alex Philip (senior), Tom Wilson, leaving for prospecting trip to Fitzsimmons Glacier area mine."

Adit Lakes view of Fitzsimmons Range

Adit Lakes and Musical Bumps

Adit Lakes Whistler and Blackcomb

Adit Lakes Tarns in Whistler

Adit Lakes Tarns Aerial View

Tarn Aerial View: Adit Lakes

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 ...

The Garibaldi Volcanic Belt is a line of mostly dormant stratovolcanoes and subglacial volcanoes largely centred around Whistler and extending through much ...

Scree: from the Norse “skridha”, landslide. The small, loose stones covering a slope. Also called talus, the French word for slope. Scree is mainly formed ...

Bergschrund or abbreviated schrund: a crevasse that forms from the separation of moving glacier ice from the stagnant ice above. Characterized by a deep ...

Neal Carter (14 Dec 1902 - 15 Mar 1978) was an early explorer of the Coast Mountains around what would eventually be called Whistler Valley. In the summer ...

The Barrier formed as a result of huge lava flows from Clinker Peak on the west shoulder of Mount Price during the last ice age. About thirteen thousand ...

The Cloudraker Skybridge and the Raven’s Eye Cliff Walk are new additions to the summit of Whistler Mountain. The Cloudraker Skybridge stretches 130 ...

Russet Lake sits in a wide, glacier carved valley at the base of The Fissile. In the direction opposite The Fissile, up on a plateau less than a ...

Whistler & Garibaldi Park 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 Mount Sproatt Taylor Meadows Train Wreck Wedgemount Lake Whistler Mountain

January February March April May June July August September October November December

Shannon Falls towers above Howe Sound at 335 metres as the third tallest falls in BC. The wonderful, though very short trail winds through a beautiful old ...

Whistler Train Wreck is a hidden little world of brightly graffiti painted, wrecked train cars along a gorgeous stretch of Cheakamus River. One ...

Nairn Falls is a wonderful, crashing and chaotic waterfall that surrounds you from the deluxe viewing platform that allows you to safely watch it from ...

Mount Meager erupted here 2400 years ago and filled the valley with debris that cemented into rock that blocked Lillooet River. Eventually water erosion ...

More of the Best Whistler Waterfalls

Nairn Falls is a wonderful, crashing and chaotic waterfall that surrounds you from the deluxe viewing platform that allows you to safely watch it from above. The beautiful, green water rushes through the ...

Russet Lake is a surreal little paradise that lays at the base of The Fissile, in Garibaldi Provincial Park. The Fissile is the strikingly bronze mountain visible from Whistler Village. From the Village ...

Hiking and biking trails are so abundant in Whistler that many go unnoticed, neglected or taken for granted. The Flank Trail is one of these. Most people in Whistler don't even know about it, but the ones that ...

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 Lake, directly across from Whistler Mountain and Blackcomb ...

More Whistler Hiking Trails & Maps

HikeInWhistler.com

Northair Mine

Black Tusk

Whistler Train Wreck

Rainbow Falls

Panorama Ridge

Wedgemount Lake

Brandywine Meadows

June Hiking Update!

Garibaldi Provincial Park

Whistler & Garibaldi Park

Whistler & Garibaldi Park Hiking