Skip the Weekend Crowds in Squamish. Try This Nearby Bouldering Paradise Instead.

Like many people who come to southwestern British Columbia, Denis Langlois wanted to climb in Squamish. It didn’t matter that, when he moved from Montreal to Canada’s westernmost province, he landed in the rural farming community of Agassiz, nearly two hundred miles from Squamish’s towering granite walls. On weekends, Langlois would load up his car and wait in stop-and-go city traffic for hours, making regular pilgrimages to Canada’s climbing mecca. Until he discovered the Fraser Canyon.

Located a short distance northeast of Langlois’s home, the Fraser Canyon is a deep chasm stretching from Lillooet to Hope, BC. Carved by one of western Canada’s most iconic rivers, the canyon starts on the dry, sagebrush interior plateau and ends in temperate coastal rainforest. It’s a region steeped in history, from Indigenous peoples to the fur trade, gold rush to the birth of Canada as a nation.

Driving through the Fraser Canyon feels like going back in time. Heading north from Hope—where Rambo: First Blood was famously shot—the road is lined with old motels, shuttered restaurants, and tourist attractions from a bygone era. But off the road, on the banks of the mighty Fraser, Langlois and a group of friends unearthed a new bouldering paradise.

The first boulder

A mind-numbing work commute can be thanked for Langlois’s curiosity about the canyon. He frequently drove two and a half hours from his home in Agassiz to dairy farms up the canyon, helping farmers use new technology on their land. As he drove, his eyes wandered from the blacktop pavement towards the forests and shoreline. He caught glimpses of boulders protruding from sandy beaches and mossy cliffs hidden in thick vegetation.

A few days before Christmas 2020, Langlois was headed home from a family sightseeing trip when his curiosity boiled over. He pulled off the highway, thanked his wife for staying with the kids, hopped over a concrete barrier, and bushwhacked to the base of a house-sized boulder. He found one side with a clean 45-degree wall that looked like a natural Kilter Board. Unfortunately, it lacked the Kilter Board’s jugs, so he contoured around the massive boulder and discovered a cave with holds on the other side. This one boulder convinced him of the area’s potential. He returned several times that January and February, despite heavy coastal rain, to start building a trail. By the end of February the Fraser Canyon’s monsoon season began to taper, and he finally got to climb on the giant highway-side boulder. Langlois told a few friends about what he was up to. Most of them gave a polite, absent smile—likely thinking of their project in Squamish—and then gently declined his invitations to drive up the canyon. Eventually, his persistence paid off when he convinced a few local buddies to come out for a day.

Gold Beach

By the end of that first summer, Langlois’s small crew was clearing trails, scrubbing moss, and establishing problems from beginner friendly V1s to stout V10s. One hot day, one developer walked down to the river’s edge and noticed the water level was way down, exposing a cluster of semi-truck-sized boulders nestled on a white beach of soft, fine-grained sand. They named the area Gold Beach and spent the rest of the day establishing instant classics including Beauty and the Beach (V6), an airy prow that ascends one of the massive boulders deposited by the mighty Fraser. “We were like kids in the sandbox,” Langlois recalled.

The potential for climbing in the Fraser Canyon seemed nearly endless to Langlois. But if he was going to keep climbing and developing, he wanted to make sure it was happening in the right way. “Early on I did a property search to try and find out if [the boulders] were on private or crown land. That’s when I found out it’s all native land,” said Langlois. Specifically, the boulders were on the lands of the Spuzzum and Yale First Nations. Neither nation had a public contact for land management, so Langlois eventually showed up at the band office to ask for permission to climb in the area. He met with the chiefs of the two nations who were happy to see climbers enjoying their land. “[They] said, if you’re cleaning the boulders and taking the moss off, just put some tobacco down and say thanks to the land for giving you the ability to play there,” Langlois explained.

A push for outdoor recreation

In May 2023, the Spuzzum Nation submitted a proposal to build a new all-season mountain resort in a sub-range of the North Cascades above the Fraser Canyon. According to the Nation’s proposal, the South Anderson Resort would serve 9,000 skiers a day in the winter and provide a range of summer recreational activities, including climbing.

The Spuzzum Nation’s proposal says the resort will bring in visitors, create jobs, and support “recreation opportunities in the Cascade Mountains in an environmentally sustainable and responsible manner.” This plan is one piece of a larger strategy using outdoor recreation to revive the Fraser Canyon’s struggling tourist economy.

Up until the 1980s, the Fraser Canyon was the only major highway connecting southwestern British Columbia to the rest of Canada. The canyon hosted a booming tourist economy with travelers frequenting restaurants, motels, and other tourist traps up and down the canyon. But in 1986, BC opened the Coquihalla Highway, a more direct route that shaved hours off the drive. A story in Canadian Biker compared the Fraser Canyon to America’s Route 66 after the construction of the Interstate Highway system, noting scenes of “abandoned motels…hotels, and gas stations surrounded by tumbleweeds and sporting rusted signs—the stuff of broken dreams and economic ruin.”

Locals hope that outdoor recreation can revitalize the region and fuel a new, sustainable economy. According to a 2019 study published by the Fraser Valley Regional District, outdoor recreation contributes $1.52 billion annually to the broader regional economy, supporting 10,262 jobs. Unfortunately for the Fraser Canyon, most of that economic impact is happening closer to the more popular, outdoorsy towns of Hope and Chilliwack. “While outdoor recreation is growing, the development has been slower in the Fraser Canyon,” Sam Waddington, owner of the local gear shop Mt. Waddington Outdoors, explained. “To any of us who spend time in that corridor, it’s hard to understand why, because it is spectacularly beautiful.”

Sharing the canyon

Initially, Langlois was hesitant about promoting his work in the Fraser Canyon. He was all too familiar with the crowded crags, lineups at boulders, and the trash and trampled vegetation that followed the climbing crowds in Squamish. He also recognized that without more climbers, all his work developing and maintaining could be for naught. “Route developers put in a ton of effort to clean, bolt, and set up an area—only to see it reclaimed by the forest when it wasn’t used enough,” explained Waddington, also a founding member of the Fraser Valley Climbing Society.

It was a familiar experience to Langlois who, during his first trip to the local Harrison Bluffs, spent the day “bushwhacking around alder and blackberry bushes” just to get to some of the area’s most popular routes. Not wanting to see his own hard work go to waste, Langlois eventually decided to upload beta about the area to Mountain Project and Kaya. He also enlisted Jesse Wheeler to help make a film about the area. The result was a 30-minute doc called Gold Rush, which features Langlois and the rest of the developers bouldering on the canyon’s premium granite blocks, as well as the area’s roots with Indigenous singing, drumming, and dance.

A new Squamish?

So far, Langlois hasn’t seen a horde of new climbers descend on the Fraser Canyon. Even with everything it has to offer, he still sees most climbers, including a lot of Fraser Valley locals, head to Squamish. This traffic is something that Sam Waddington, who operates gear shops in both the Fraser Valley and Sea to Sky region—the area north of Vancouver that stretches from Squamish to beyond Whistler—thinks could be about to change. “In Squamish, they’re building new crags to try and spread out the crowds, while here, developers are trying to entice people to come climb out here,” he explained. “I think the bouldering, especially around Hope and the Fraser Canyon, has the potential to be some of the best anywhere.”

Waddington is also quick to point out that the Fraser Valley is already home to some iconic climbing. The Northeast Buttress of Slesse Peak, an iconic fang of rock in the Chilliwack River Valley, is written up in the Fifty Classic Climbs of North America. The late Marc-André Leclerc, whose image hangs behind the till at Waddington’s Chilliwack shop, grew up in Agassiz and established and soloed all types of ambitious routes in the region. The Chinese Puzzle Wall, which both he and Brette Harrington put up an impressive first ascent on, is just one valley over from Slesse.

But the Fraser Valley is still far from being a true competitor to Squamish’s bouldering scene. The Fraser Valley Climbing Guide (2023) comes in at just over 100 pages—roughly a quarter of the size of either Squamish Select or Squamish Bouldering. Waddington argues this low number simply means the Fraser Valley has plenty of new-routing potential. Given the high cost of living in Squamish and crowding at popular climbs, he thinks that people are already looking for other places to explore. “We have the climbing society, we have a local gym getting more people climbing, we have a local guidebook, and we have folks like Denis finding these cool new areas,” he said. “I’m feeling stoked about the future.”

How to climb in the Fraser Valley and Fraser Canyon

Where to fly

• Fly into the region directly to Abbotsford airport, or into Vancouver. Driving from Vancouver to the Fraser Valley take between one-and-a-half to three hours depending on where you’re headed.

Where to stay

• Hope and Chilliwack offer the closest accommodation to the climbing areas, from hotels to private and provincial park campgrounds Check out BC Parks and Recreation Sites and Trails BC for all options.

Climbing beta

• Beta for the entire region can be found in the Fraser Valley Climbing Guide, available online or at shops like Mt. Waddington Outdoors in Chilliwack and Valhalla Pure in Abbotsford. Online beta can be found on Mountain Project and, for the 82 listed problems in the Fraser Canyon, on Kaya.

Rainy day activities

• Project Climbing has two gyms in the area, one in Abbotsford and a bouldering gym along the Chilliwack River.
• Land Cafe and Studio next door to the Chilliwack gym has great coffee and rest-day yoga.

Tread lightly

Make sure to practice Leave No Trace ethics at all climbing areas in the region, especially regarding human waste. Some areas in the Fraser Canyon are located near traditional fishing areas and other important cultural places. Respect the Indigenous nations whose land these climbs are established on. You can donate to the Fraser Valley Climbing Society to help with local stewardship and development projects.

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