Adit Lakes

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

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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

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