Stawamus Chief

The Stawamus Chief, officially Stawamus Chief Mountain, is a granite dome located adjacent to the town of Squamish, British Columbia, Canada. It towers over 700m above the waters of nearby Howe Sound. It is often claimed to be the "second largest granite monolith in the world".The Squamish, indigenous people from this area, consider the Chief to be a place of spiritual significance. The Squamish language name for the mountain is, and their traditions say it is a longhouse transformed to stone by Xáays, as the Transformer Brothers are known in this language. The great cleft in the mountain's cliff-face in Squamish legend is a mark of corrosion left by the skin of Sínulhka, a giant two-headed sea serpent.The mountain gets its name from their village near its foot, Stawamus, as is also the case with the Stawamus River and Stawamus Lake, though the pronunciation of the village name is different than as commonly used in English.The parkIn 1997, the Stawamus Chief Provincial Park was established by the British Columbia Ministry of the Environment. The park is over 5 square kilometres in area and encompasses not only the Chief but also the Stawamus Squaw, a slightly smaller granitic dome located a short distance to the north-east. This was renamed Slhanay in 2009 due to the derogatory implications of the word "Squaw". Also featured in the park are a walk-in campground and a number of maintained hiking trails which lead through the forest of the Chief's "backside" to several summit areas.