Fifteen people got up early and met at Shouldice in order to climb Mt Niles – a mountain none of us had done before. We found the approach hike quite interesting and varied, passing Sherbrooke Lake, open areas, wild flowers, mature forest and finally getting our first clear view of the mountain at Niles meadows.

The route is as per Alan Kane up the drainage to the col and then up the left skyline via the pinnacles (there are no cliffs when you get up close). Arriving at the col, one person had trouble keeping up with the group and decided to stay near the pinnacles. The route looked obvious from here.

The 14 of us were quite spread out during the ascent, but this was no problem because it never got steep enough for rock fall danger. It had been variably cloudy all day, but part way up the 1 hour ascent from the col it started raining lightly and shortly afterwards a light hail massaged our heads. Being so close to the summit, we were all tough and kept going. We encountered no technical problems despite wet rock. Just as the first scramblers arrived at the summit we heard thunder rolling, but I don’t recall seeing lightening. The sky looked lighter in the West, so we hoped it would blow over. As the rear guard approached the summit, the first people started coming down, worried about the thunderstorm. It crossed our minds to abort the trip 5 minutes before reaching the summit for safety, but in the end we all went for the top anyway. No-one even thought about sitting down to eat or rest under the circumstances. We just snapped a few summit photos and headed right back down. Mt Balfour and the Wapta icefield were nicely visible from the top despite the weather. 14 out of 15 Ramblers had reached the summit.

By 3 PM we were all reassembled down by the pinnacles and had our well-deserved late lunch in clear weather. As it turned out we could have stayed at the summit longer, because no thunder was ever heard again after our precipitous departure from the top. The descent from the col was more leisurely with 2 stops along the way. We arrived back in the parking lot at 6:30 PM with sore feet after nearly 10 hours of hiking, but we were all happy to have had a chance to climb this remote and beautiful peak. Participants: Joan, Zorica, Carl, Janice, Ghulam, Jeannine, Ealaine, Stan, Arnold, Greg, Laszlo, Ricardo, Pedro, Inge and Rita (scribe).