With a poor weather forecast for the Louise area, we switched our objective in the morning. We think that worked out well as at Mt Fullerton we had sunny and overcast skies with very minimal precipitation.

The possibility of switching destinations had been sent out the evening before but seven Ramblers still set their alarms and got up dark and early to meet at 6 at Shouldice. Even at 6 there was another hiking group meeting to climb Bogart or possibly Sparrowhawk. After some discussion about weather and what was reachable we decided on Mt Fullerton which five of us had not done and the other two had done a long time ago. In order to keep it to a SC5 we decided to ascend the easier NE ridge.
It is a long walk along the Little Elbow road to the Nihahi Creek trail and then a long way first on trail but then mainly on cobbles to the bottom of the ridge. So after 2 1/2 hours or so we hadn't even begun to climb significantly. We then started up Alan Kane's pictured route but didn't notice that he transfers into a gully. So we lost 20-30 minutes in backtracking down maybe as much as 100 m in order to get back on track. Once in the gully we stopped for a second breakfast.

Break in the approach gully

The gully is not difficult but the boulders get a little tedious long before it emerges onto the ridge.


Approaching the summit

The ridge itself is interesting with a few scrambly moves.


A bit of scrambling on the summit ridge

We were at the top after a little over five hours. To the west the weather did not look good and we wondered about Brenda's trip near Highwood and our original target at Louise.


On the summit of Mt Fullerton

Four elected to descend via Kane's moderate route along the SE ridge. The route finding along there was challenging and it sounds like it would be at the difficult end of moderate (SC6).


Intrepid Ramblers on SE Ridge

Meanwhile the three headed down a little to the left (north) of the ascent gully and found better footing. Most of it was on thin vegetattion. Only the last bit involved a very short bushwhack to get down to Nihahi Creek. On the return we explored the canyon of Nihahi Creek. This was really quite interesting. Definitely not a Utah slot canyon, but well worth exploring if you are in the area.


Entering Nihahi Canyon

Bum-sliding in Nihahi Canyon

The three took a longish break at the Nihahi/Little Elbow junction and just as they were ready to continue the four arrived in good spirits and still full of energy for the walk back to the cars.

Our total time was a little over ten hours car to car.

Many thanks to Alda, Jeannine, Susan, Gary, Jack and Peter for joining me Carl (C/S).