The Chilliwack Outdoor Club: 1976-2026
Blog post written by Ron Dart

The Chilliwack Outdoor Club can be informally traced and tracked to the tragic airplane crash on Mt. Slesse in December 1956. A fledging search and rescue group came into being then and one result was, in time, Neil Grainger’s missive, THE MOUNTAIN PROJECT (mountains in the area named after Canadian soldiers killed in WWII). Neil was part of the early search and rescue phase of Mt. Slesse but his “Mountain Project” book very much put the Central-Upper Fraser Valley-Cascade mountains on the map. It was Neil who commissioned Peter Scott (see his recently published book, MY SOUL LIVES IN THESE MOUNTAINS) to do substantive work on the mountain project. It was also the friendship of Neil and Jack Bryceland (Bryceland many other mountaineering connections) that led Jack to be the main compiler and editor of the growing 103 HIKES IN SOUTHWESTERN BRITISH COLUMBIA. I remember, quite fondly, spending an afternoon, about 20 years ago, in Chilliwack with Neil and Jack taking in their history of Slesse, the Search and Rescue phase, Neil and Peter’s work on the Mountain Project and the early years of the Chilliwack Outdoor Club.

The Chilliwack Outdoor Club was formally birthed in 1976 and since then many have been the trips, recorded, as time unfolded, in THE TRIPPER. The level of trips, over the decades, has been a combination of entry level hikes, to varied glacier and rock climbs, to week traverses, nights spent in Alpine Club of Canada cabin-huts and trips and treks now in Latin America, Iceland, haute route in France-Switzerland, European refugio treks, Dolomites high on the agenda, winter ski touring in O’Hara and Whistler, plenty of snowshoe trips and much else.

I might also add the Club is faithfully active in repairing, clearing and building many trails in the area, including repairing bridges that cross foaming Spring streams—there is quite a cadre of support for this work. The Spring 2026 celebration of 50 years of the Chilliwack Outdoor Club was a gala event of fine food, memories and old-new friends gathered together. The Chilliwack Outdoor Club has a packed agenda of day trips, a few days in the mountains and longer trips in BC and elsewhere, bike trips also regularly on the agenda. A full history is yet to be written of the Chilliwack Outdoor Club from the informal Mount Slesse days to the more organized and growing Chilliwack Outdoor Club as it has matured in the last few decades into one of the most active clubs in the Federation of Mountain Clubs of British Columbia (FMCBC).

montani semper lIberi
Ron Dart 

 

Learn more about the Chilliwack Outdoor Club on their website.