VOC trips are organized by members like yourself, not professional guides. The trips go into wilderness areas where assistance is unavailable and unexpected events can occur. You could be seriously injured or die. You are responsible for your own actions. Please use caution.
Cheam Range scrambles and alpine lake camping: Welch+Foley · Sat. Jul. 26th, 2025 - Sun. Jul. 27th, 2025
- Details Page: Where you can see brief trip details (publicly viewable).
- This trip does not have an associated Wiki Page.
- This trip does not have an associated Message Board Thread.
- Signup Page: Where you can signup, bail, edit participation entries, see/email members on the trip, etc.
- Wikitext Page: From where you can cut and paste information formatted for the wiki.
- Printable List Page: Which generates a printable list of participants.
- Edit Page: Where the trip organizer can edit the entry for this trip.
- Mark Going Page: Where the trip organizer can sign members up as "actually going".
- Modify Signups: Where the trip organizer can change signup classes.
Start: Saturday, Jul. 26th, 8:00 am
End: Sunday, Jul. 27th
Pre-trip meeting: Tuesday, Jul. 22nd, 6:30 pm
Pre-trip meeting location: Zoom
Description:
The Cheam Range is a beautiful series of prominent peaks east of Highway 1 just past Chilliwack. It features some excellent scrambles, and all the peaks are climbable with various degrees of difficulty. Welch Peak (2,438m) is the tallest and can be combined with its neighbor Foley Peak (2,308m) and considering there’s a very pretty lake (Williamson Lake) just below the summits, let’s go there for the weekend to tag them both and camp by the lake!
The route:
Assuming that we won’t have a vehicle capable of handling the FSR, we will start at Foley Lake and hike a bit over 5km (1,000m vert.) to Williamson Lake where we will set camp. We will then start the scramble up Foley Peak, towering 600m above the lake. We will chill at camp during the evening, and tackle Welch on Sunday, which is another 800m of vertical gain. Depending on the comfort level of the group and how the day goes, we could also do a traverse and tag both peaks in one day!
The area was snow-free at this time of year in 2023 and 2024 but full of snow in 2022. In the event the snowpack lingers well into July, I’ll find a backup plan as I don’t want to camp on snow and would prefer to enjoy the lake in its liquid form.
Logistics:
It takes about 2h to get there so we will aim to leave Vancouver on Saturday no later than 8am. The dirt road to Foley Lake is 2WD accessible, if we do manage to have a high clearance vehicle, we could also park higher on the FSR, but we should assume this won’t be the case. We’ll obviously need camping gear.
Requirements:
Those are fairly tall peaks, and the climb includes some exposure as well as chossy sections, so this is not a beginner friendly trip. Previous scrambling experience is required as well as backpacking experience. Limited scrambling experience could be substituted with good rock climbing skills here.
Gear (list non-exhaustive):
-Camping setup
-Good shoes (approach shoes are ideal, running shoes are to be avoided)
-Helmet (mandatory)
-Gloves (optional but can help as report suggest the rock may be tough on the hands)
Posted: 2025-04-30 09:11:33
Last modified: 2025-05-02 07:35:16