There had been no first ascent of the massif until July 1928 when an Alpine Club of Canada party, consisting of mountaineers R. E. Knight, W. G. Wheatley, E. C. Brooks, T. Fyles and B. Clegg, climbed Mount Cayley. Fyles submitted the mountain name to the Government of British Columbia in September 1928 for Beverley Cochrane Cayley, a mountaineer and friend of those in the climbing expedition who had died in June that year. The name became official on April 2, 1929, and photographs of the peak were published with Fyles' description of first ascent in the 1931 Canadian Alpine Journal Vol XX.