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 park is over five square kilometres in area and encompasses not only the Chief but also Slhanay, a slightly smaller granitic dome located a short distance to the north-east.

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.

This bridge (officially known as Stawamus Chief Pedestrian Overpass) was built as part of the Winter Olympic upgrades of the Sea to Sky Highway.

The Chief is part of a medium-sized pluton of a granitic rock (granodiorite) that was initially formed in the early Cretaceous (approximately 100 million years ago) by the slow cooling and solidification of molten magma deep below the surface of the Earth.

Once exposed at the surface, the original granodiorite body was shaped by glacial erosion, which is responsible for the tall steep walls that define the Chief, as well as the excavation of Howe Sound, a fjord.

In several high places there are short sections of "trail" that are so steep or slippery, that chains and ladders have been bolted to the rock for aid.

The Apron is a vast sweep of lower-angle rock which rises like a wedge from the highway to about halfway up the Grand Wall near the Chief's approximate centre.

There it meets with a rising ridge of rock known as the Squamish Buttress, and promptly terminates in the great chasm known as the South Gully.

Rather than crumbling and slowly wearing away, large flakes of granitic rock tend to shear off and drop from the face in layers.

It formed by the splitting of the solid granodiorite along a vertical fracture, which created a conduit for basalt and andesite magmas, which may have fed volcanoes on the surface above the then-buried granitic rock.

Although not exactly old growth these stands of trees are representative of pacific coastal temperate rain forest common in the area.

The largest is the Cacodemon Boulder at the base of the Grand Wall, an individual chunk of rock as big as a small apartment building.

[5] In terms of structure, composition, and quality of the granitic rock, the Chief reportedly resembles Half Dome in the Yosemite Valley.

Rock climber Peter Croft began what became a long and notable climbing career in Squamish in the late 1970s.

In the summer of 2006, Sonnie Trotter established what was at the time considered to be the hardest traditional climbing route in North America, and possibly the world: Cobra Crack 5.14b (8c).