Welch Peak - May 17th 2023

 I was at the dentist on Monday, two days before my 32nd birthday, and realized I had nothing planned. It was a Wednesday and supposed to be beautiful and I figured I’d be able to get the day off work pretty easy so I put out the feelers on the SWBC Peakbaggers FaceBook group and got two replies. The first was from someone who wanted to go up Mt. Baker via the Easton glacier in one day on foot. I was not interested because I had already done that exact route less than a year ago and its not particularly interesting as well as being a physically demanding day but I told him maybe if nothing else came up.

Chris bouldering while we waited for the sun to come up

Luckily the second message was from Chris Gulka asking if I was interested in Welch and / or Foley peak. I knew of Chris and had read many of his trip reports, which were quite impressive, so I was eager to climb with him. Additionally I was interested in both these peaks as I hadn’t even touched the Cheam range (mostly due to the terrible access) so I immediately said yes. Surprisingly he wanted to start early, I mean real early, at 1am at the trailhead. Which meant meeting in Abbotsford at 11pm. I wasn’t dissuaded so I quickly made preparations. Initially I was really concerned about sleeping because I usually have trouble sleeping before a big day and meeting at 11 meant there wasn’t much time after work to even try. I thought about just not sleeping at all but I knew that would be awful near the end so I decided to try taking some melatonin. Boy did that work! I took it at ~6:30 and by 7 I was feeling it, I laid down and promptly passed out until 10:30 which means I had a solid nearly 4 hours which helped immensely.

Looking east from the start of the scramble to an unnamed ridge connected to Foley Peak

We met at 11pm at the McCallum park n ride and got in his Toyota 4Runner for the trip up the FSR. He was very nice and knowledgeable and we made quick work of the drive up the trailhead. Chris had been up the road a few months back during a failed attempt on Welch peak so he knew the road well but there had been a lot of snow on the road when he did it so we were able to make it even farther. I was very glad he had opted to drive as it was easily the worst FSR I have ever been on. We stopped a little before the road got truly terrible and got ready and started hiking at 1am.

Looking up at our route at the beginning of the scramble

First was covering the remaining logging road which didn’t take too long and then we hit the trail. We crossed a river which was flowing pretty fast and I stepped in it but my boots stayed dry luckily. After that it was a steady uphill through the forest to knock some elevation out of the way. Chris was a very fit and fast hiker and it was tough to keep up with him. We stopped once in the forest for a bit of food and soon we emerged in to the sub alpine. It was still pitch black and we were navigating by headlamp but the trail was pretty good and easy to follow. The final ascent to the alpine lake below Welch peak consisted of stomping up a mellow snow slope. It was soft and easy to kick steps in so we didn’t put crampons on.

Chris starting the route

At this point it was only 3am and we had made such good time that we needed to wait a bit. Chris had wanted to start so early because he wasn’t sure of the extent of the snow on the west ridge route and wanted it to be nice and firm in case there was a lot. Luckily there turned out to be almost no snow (that we needed to cross) for most of the route and so we ended up waiting for about an hour for the sun to come out so we could scope out the route more thoroughly. There was a nice boulder to hang out at and we messed around on some V0 boulder problems with our boots off.

Looking back at some of the terrain we scrambled from the false summit

Around 4:30 it was starting to get bright enough to see the route and we decided to head off. We opted to gain the west ridge where the scramble begins by a slightly different variation than the standard route because it seemed more straightforward. This consisted of a steep snow climb but it was quite short. I was happy to go that way since I have very little to no experience on steep snow and I figured this would be good practice. We strapped on our crampons and headed up. The steep snow was very easy and I felt surprisingly comfortable and soon we were on top.

Approaching the false summit

The west ridge was the long standard scramble route. I had read a few reports and they ranged from “Easy as hell” to “Holy crap I had a near death experience” so I wasn’t sure exactly how bad it would be but I figured it wouldn’t be too bad since a few of the reports I had read the writer seemed pretty green. Long story short it wasn’t too bad. Anything really difficult was easy to bypass on climbers right. The worst part was the loose sections but you kind of have to deal with them and just need to go slow. Even if you slipped on one of these sections it wouldn’t be instant death but you could definitely risk serious injury (broken bones) so take your time.

The "crux" which has a rope assist we avoided

There was one section that Chris opted to go straight up that felt very stiff. I am conservative in my route finding and so I waited while he went up and showered me with loose rock while I sheltered in an overhang. He made it but it didn’t look fun and so I found an easy way around to the right. After that we both kind of stuck together and went the same way. I didn’t want to take any risks with it being my first real scramble of the year and all (and my birthday to boot!).

Looking at summit from false summit

In one or two spots we had to cross some snow but we made sure it was not exposed or too steep because we didn’t want to be bothered to put our crampons on. I did pull out my ice axe at least once just to be safe however it wasn’t strictly necessary. When we came to the “crux” section (marked by a rope) it was quite easy and we both didn’t use the rope. The going was slow but eventually we found ourselves on top of the false summit that we had been staring at for so long.

Me at summit w/ Foley in back

From the false summit we were finally able to see the true summit. It looked kind of far and difficult (as it always does) but from reading it wasn’t much longer or any more difficult so we pressed on. There was one section we both scoped out that looked like we would need to cross steep snow for a while and we were both a bit nervous about it but when we got to it there was an easy rock path around it so that was nice. Of course it turned out to be not bad at all and soon we were on the summit, it was ~7:30. We took a half hour break eating, taking pictures and I even called Sam for a bit. It was quite windy though and so we sheltered behind some rocks for most of it. Chris is very knowledgeable about the area and its climbing history and shared a ton of information with me for which I was very appreciative. I had never been in the Cheam range before and so finally being able to put an image to the mountain names I had heard of was fabulous. Welch peak is the highest mountain in the range so it was a very nice gem for my birthday.

Looking west towards the Still

Around 8am we headed down and as usual there is not much to say about the descent. Usually it is faster than the ascent but on the scrambling portion the rock is so loose that we had to be so careful I think it ended up taking us just as long down as up. Little did I know there is an easier descent that utilizes a long scree field that was covered in snow which would have made things significantly easier but oh well. For anyone reading this, if the option exists, I would definitely recommend following the east descent route to save your body (its also probably a bit safer as you don’t need to navigate the loose downclimbing).

Afternoon view of our route

We did take a small shortcut near the end where we descended the standard ascent route (the one we had opted to avoid at the beginning) which saved us a bit of time by going down some soft snow. Soon we were at the lake where we gathered our snowshoes and the rest was a blurry boring slog back to the truck. We got back by 1 for a C2C time of ~12 hours. Amazing time!!

Great picture Chris took of me downclimbing