[Stefan]

These peaks are up the Chilliwack Valley in British Columbia Mount Mercer 11/26 Greg and I drove up the Thurston Mountain Road to almost 2800 feet. Looking at the CalTopo map, there is a menagerie of roads and ATV trails in this area, however, there really is only one good road. It goes to the saddle between Thurston Mountain and Mount Mercer. The road is steep beyond 3000 feet. And is used by ATV’s. We walked the road, which then turned to snow around 3500 feet and we made our way up to the saddle at 5000 on this road. We put on snowshoes at this saddle at 5000 feet and then went directly east to the summit where there is a small communication tower. Views? Nada! Snowing. On the way down on the road before the snow got way too deep there were in fact two CAN AM off road vehicles with guys out having fun seeing how high they could get. This is a very easy peak that has over 1000 feet of prominence. No pictures!

That night we slept down in the valley. It rained from about 4:00pm to 2:00am. Flora Peak 11/27 Next morning we were moving up towards Flora Peak sometime before 8:00am. You leave from a large parking lot near the Chilliwack Lake Campground. Since it had rained so much in the night, I did not know what the snow was going to do. We donned snowshoes around 4700 feet and just before the open basin, the snow when deep—the kind of deep to the knee. I knew then we would not make it. So Greg had the idea of trying to make it to the ridgeline and see if we could find wind blown snow. Well, after several hundred yard of deep fresh snow, we did indeed find wind blown slabs of snow and the progress increased to the ridgeline. At the ridgeline we then found mostly shin deep snow. We then encountered a small class 3 step (about 20 meters long) with ice and crusty snow. Up we went. After that it was typical snowshoeing to the summit up and over two minor summits. Once again….NO VIEWS except sometimes seeing Lake Chilliwack down below which was cool. 5.5 hours up. 3 hours down. No pictures!

[raising3hikers]

Nice to see some Chilliwack lake area TR's. I'm gonna have to remember those

[furthur]

Go back when it's clear...though these were last June.