Mt. Mercer

Jocelyn Timmermans
14 hours ago
2 min read

Januray 16, 2026 -- Chilliwack

Stats: 11.3 km / 920m gain / 1592m high / 5:15 hours MT

What a gorgeous day! Can't believe I've never done this one before. And so close to home. It is an eastern neighbor to Thurston and then Elk Mountains. The best views of the three to be had are on this one. David Graham was our guide, while I coordinated the group. Him and Kyle were quite familiar with this route.

There are several ways to approach Mt. Mercer. We hiked/snowshoed in from the east, parking our three 4x4s just minutes away from where we started hiking west on a deactivated FSR that branched off of Chipmunk Creek FSR which leads to Mt. Cheam and Lady Peaks. There's a significant washout on popular Chipmunk Creek FSR. It's small but enough that you cannot get a vehicle through it. Hopefully someone clears it soon. Some of the water-bars were quite deep with steep humps. David Beihn ended up having the running board from his truck fall off!

About a third way up we stopped to strap on our snowshoes. It was nice to get that excess weight off of our backs but walking on the crunchy compacted snow sometimes angled our ankles at aukward angles. It's definitly more tiring than hiking.

After 2:15 hours we got our first alpine views -- east.

Rexford, Slesse, Chilliwack River Valley and the Border Peaks -- south.

Group shot, back row, L to R: Stelian A, Joe K, Val S, Dave B, Johnny G, Kyle V, Shelley Beyak, David G, Sue A, Brigitte G + me Front row: Colin Fingler + Brian H

We decided to park ourselves for lunch at this wide open area on the ridge leading to Mt. Mercer. It was 12:00 noon and it would've been probably another hour to get to the summit. This didn't make sense to do since David and Kyle assured us that the views were the best from where we were. Also with sunset being at 4:30pm and having already spent three hours moving time to get there, we were more than happy to call this our turn back point.