Jeremy Rolle wants to take you on a trail run
Why he thinks Chilliwack might be B.C.'s most underrated trail running destination.
Written by Cam Fenton. Photos Provided by Jeremy Rolle.
Jeremy Rolle never planned to become a runner. When he started, he was studying in Wales and logging miles to balance out a lifestyle that he says was “travelling and partying a lot”.
“I just wanted to be able to keep up with the partying,” he said. “I wanted to stay healthy, so I started running”.
He became friends with someone he describes as “a die-hard runner”, then followed him to Paris. It was there that Rolle ran his first race; the Paris Marathon.
“That was a terrible idea,” he explained. “My body was not ready to handle 42 kilometres on pavement. I destroyed my knee”.
The injury forced Rolle to take a break from running. But a year later, he moved to New Brunswick, joined a cross-country running team and “fell in love with running.”
“Being with the team was awesome,” he said. “I could just hang out with friends and run. I was always running by myself before that.”
Running with friends and being coached for the first time turned Rolle into a runner. A few years later, he made the move from pavement to dirt.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Rolle and his wife, Carol-Ann, bought a camper and started exploring the Maritimes. They hiked a few of their first trails, but before long, Rolle realized they could cover more ground if they ran.
“When we first did it, we're like, ‘Oh, we invented a new sport,’” laughed Rolle. “Then we started reading blogs and articles, and realized there are people doing this and doing big distances”.
They were hooked. After some long runs around New Brunswick and a few races in Quebec, they decided to move west to British Columbia. Chief among the considerations for their new home? A place with great trail running.
The Big Chill
After more than two decades living in the Sea to Sky Corridor, Gary Robbins, a trail running world legend, shocked some people when he moved out to Chilliwack. The move was a big enough deal to garner media coverage, and in one story, Robbins made the case Fraser Valley running as a place with “incredible mountain access…really diverse trail networks and something that is very exceptional, but a little lesser-known in the Lower Mainland.”
The year after he moved, Robbins released The Big Chill, a film about an epic 100-mile loop traversing the North Cascade peaks that tower over the Chilliwack River Valley.
Rolle remembers seeing the film while he was still out east. At the time, he worked in marketing for a sports nutrition company. That work connected him with athletes and events, which is how he met Robbins.
After a few conversations with Robbins and Jenn Quilty, another Chilliwack runner that Rolle describes as “a local legend”, Rolle was sold on the Fraser Valley. In February 2023, he and Carol-Ann moved to Chilliwack, sight-unseen.
“Chilliwack felt like home very, very quickly,” he said. “We got connected with runners pretty much right away”. The landscape and trails helped too.
“The whole valley is just these amazing high peaks where we can go from zero to 2000 meters in no time,” he said. “It’s so amazing for training, with beautiful mountains and pretty much nobody on the trails. Often, you have the whole mountain to yourself”.
The Chilliwack Trail Club
It didn’t take long for Jeremy and Carol Ann to start building community. In November, they joined another friend, Zach, and launched the Chilliwack Trail Club. Things started small.
“Ten was a big day for us for the first few months,” he said. Then, in June 2024, Field House Brewing, which had launched its own run club, reached out with a proposal to collaborate.
“They offered to do a competition just to bring more people out to the run clubs,” he explained. “That day we had 90 people…it was mind-blowing.”
Today, dozens of runners join the club’s two weekly runs. On Mondays, they do something called the 6-7-8. Meet at 6:00 p.m. Run for 7 kilometres. Socialize until 8:00 p.m. Wednesdays are “wild card” runs, where the distance is determined by a randomly drawn playing card. There are also long runs on weekends and some special events.
“It's pretty cool to see how involved the community is,” said Rolle.
And the Trail Club isn’t the only way that Rolle is helping build the trail running community. On June 4th he’s leading a trail running clinic at the Mount Waddington Outdoors flagship store in Chilliwack. He’s also the director of Heads or Trails, a company that organizes running, bike and multi-sport races across the region, including the Vedder Mountain Challenge, a multi-sport race that Gary Robbins first launched in 2022.
“Gary reached out to us while Carol-Ann and I were flagging the course for them in 2025,” Rolle explained. “We met with Gary, and he said, ‘We would love you to take over’.”
Robbins explained that “we were directing 8 races a year and a few of those events surprised us with how big they got in short order.”
“In the end our team were going non-stop for months at a time to stay on top of it all and the VMC was just not seeing the level of attention it needed to continue to grow,” he said. “We had decided internally that we would either take a one year hiatus in Chilliwack, or attempt to find a successor.”
There was more back-and-forth, but late last year, Robbins handed the reins to Rolle.
“When Jeremy agreed to take over we could not have been happier. Having a local who's as talented and passionate about trail running as Jeremy, and also happens to be in the events space, was just too good to be true,” Robbins said. “I still wholeheartedly believe that Chilliwack and the VMC are going to be huge events and attractions within the trail running scene, and I know Jeremy is the man to continue to bring that vision to life here locally!"
For Rolle, the VMC was a chance to show off just how much he loves his backyard.
“We’re very excited to have an event at home,” he explained.
There are still spots open for the 15km run, 35km run and the multi-sport Vedder Mountain Challenge. If you’re looking for trail running shoes, vests, nutrition or other gear, Mount Waddington has new products coming in every week. Click here to see what’s in stock online or stop into any of our locations to check it out in person.
