Date atop Mt. Slesse - the Highest Summit in Chilliwack
- Greg Luesink
- Jul 20
- 6 min read
This was a dream come true! Ever since meeting Jas, I've wanted to share many of the stunning places that I have had the joy of experiencing in our "wackyard". Two of the most iconic summits in the river valley are Slesse and Rexford, both requiring a bit of scrambling and even roping up. I will never get tired of these incredible peaks, so I was especially excited to go up them again with Jas.
In June, we summited Rexford together, spending the night on bivy rock to watch the gorgeous sunset and sunrise with Slesse as the backdrop. Jas also wanted to climb Slesse, and exactly 4 weeks after we did Rexford, a perfect weather for an ascent appeared in the forecast. An extra layer of complexity was that Jas has been landscaping this summer, which leaves her pretty tired by the end of the week. So, with a cloudy Saturday as a rest day, we opted for an early start on sunny Sunday July 19th.
I'm trying something a little different for this post - first the video, then all the writing at once followed by photos.
I figured we might be able to do Slesse in perhaps 13 hours car-to-car, but it also might take longer. For some extra buffer, we set our alarm for 3:30am, with breakfast prepped for us to leave by 4 am to eat while we drove the ~50 minutes to the scrambler's trailhead on the West side of Slesse. Everything went smoothly and we departed the car a few minutes after 5 am with headlamps on. The first ~5km is in rough shape, being completely overgrown with shrubs and deadfall. We high-stepped, schwacked, and plodded along until we reached the creek flowing down from Slesse after 1h 40m. I need to go back to this section and bring a chainsaw and brushcutter - it will shave that time in half to make it runnable in the future. At the creek, we filled up some extra water flasks to stash at the top of the approach trail and set off.
The first 5km of overgrown FSR only gains an undulating 400m, leaving 1700m of vertical gain remaining to the summit, also in about 5km. Suffice to say, it is one of the most if not the steepest trail in the whole valley!
Because Jas works so hard landscaping, I opted to carry all of the climbing gear (ropes, rack etc) so that Jas could just tote her Distance 15 with water and food. Even then, her pack was pretty heavy with about 3.5L of water. I had about 6L of water in my pack, 3L of which was to stash later. We had exactly 1000m to climb to the knoll where we would get our first view-point of Slesse. I estimated that we could do this in about 2 hours doing 500m of gain/hour. We climbed up the ever-changing forest, passing Salal plants, deadfall, a flock of curious Red-breasted Nuthatches, and lots of sandy choss near the top of the climb.
We finally reached the knoll after just over 2 hours, which felt great! It was about 9:30 as I launched the drone to get some footage of Slesse while Jas ate some snacks. Our next checkpoint was the "cave" at the base of the scrambling. With 500m left to gain until there, I figured it would be about another hour or so until we donned our harnesses. Sure enough, after meandering through the meadows, boulder fields, gullies, and rock slabs, we reached the cave just before 11am. We took another break to eat some food and pull out our climbing gear. I wasn't sure how comfortable Jas would be with the exposure, since Slesse has a lot more steep drop-offs than Rexford's West ridge. I kept a rope on my shoulder just in case she wanted to tie-in for anything, and we started up the nasty gully to gain the first ramp system.
Much to our surprise, we had just surmounted the chockstone when we heard some voices behind us. A group of 3 had been on our tail the whole time! Alex and Trevor Barker as well as Francis Bailey were about to climb the NW Face of Slesse, ~5 pitches up to 5.8.
We chatted quickly, as I had seen their names online from mutual friends. Jas and I traversed along the ledge system towards "diving board rock." Jas let out a laugh as we reached it. Although she had seen it in many photos, she had only experienced the optical illusion that makes the diving board appear to be incredibly exposed. While it is exposed, it is very easy to scramble up to it and even back down from it. Things were starting off smoothly. The next section of lichen-covered rock I was prepared for Jas to want a rope for, but she said she'd give it a try and absolutely crushed it. We followed another grassy plateau to the last ramp before the "Gendarme Gully". Once again, Jas did amazing and we kept the rope on my pack even for the tricky fridge-hugging-downclimb move into the gully. With a bit of guidance for where to put her hands and feet, she made the moves easily. We made our way up the loose gully below the insane Rock Finger / Gendarme. Finally, we were at the base of the 5.6 pitch!
We opted to break it into two shorter pitches for easier communication and so that we didn't have to simul-climb at all. Having done this route many times, I cruised up to just about halfway and built an anchor, radioing down to Jas that I was secure and she could take me off belay. I pulled up the slack in the rope and put Jas on belay. Pretty soon, she was with me on the ledge, and we swapped over the system so I would lead the next pitch to the next ledge system. Once I reached the signature rap-tat on the large ledge, I put Jas on belay and she soon joined me at the belay station. We unroped and began our final bit of scrambling up to the summit!
There was only one steep bit left to do, but it was short and I was able to point out some good holds for Jas as she clambered up. We traversed the ledges until we were making our way up the final choss gully to the summit, careful not to loose any blocks.
Finally, we stepped through the rock-portal and were standing atop the highest summit in the valley! (Gaia mapping labels Welch as higher, but the majority of sources state Slesse as 2439m and Welch 2431m). It took us just under 8 hours to reach the top at about 12:55 pm.
I took out the drone and got some footage of us and the climbers on the NW Face. We enjoyed the top for about half an hour as we ate food and enjoyed the 360˚ views. Scrambling down slowly but surely, we made it to our stashed ropes at the rappel station, tossing them down for our first of two 40m rappels. Reversing down a scramble is almost always less-secure than going up, so we didn't rush as we retraced our path down the loose Gendarme gully, up the steep fridge-hug, and around the corner to the second optional rappel. Here, Jas felt good enough to down-climb if I stayed close, so we did just that. The the lichen-covered rock, I decided that we would just rappel, since it is about as fast and feels much more secure. Finally, we were at the Diving Board once again, and I scrambled down ahead of Jas to get some photos of her on the iconic, yet precarious-looking rock formation (don't worry, I made sure her tether was clipped to the anchor!). She reversed down the short bit of scrambling and we finally were in the last scree gully. We opted to do the "caving" option through the chock-stone and made it back to our bags.
It took about 2 hours to get back to our stashed water in the cave, which meant we probably had about 3.5 to 4 hours back to the car. After re-packing the bags, we set off down the rock-field, down the grassy gullies, and through the alpine shrubbery back to the viewpoint knoll. Another stashed water re-filled our supply and we started down the 1000m descent to the overgrown FSR. The bushwack back was only tolerable because we were laughing at how ridiculous it was to be fighting through branches, logs, and spiderwebs. Finally, we made it back to the car after 141/4 hours. It is always surprising what the body can do on little sleep!
I am incredibly proud of Jas, she absolutely crushed this objective with style and a smile. Even if we didn't summit, I was proud of her for giving it the effort and trying something big, hard, and scary. This is not an easy hike and climb for anyone to do, and most people don't work a full week of landscaping beforehand ;) Jas never ceases to amaze me, no matter what adventure we embark on in our life together.
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