Elevation Gain: 870m
Distance: 13.92km
Total Time: 3 hours 57 minutes
Date: May 11th, 2025
What is one to do when the weather is too iffy to fly? Calum, Garrick, Gabe and myself weren’t all the keen to sit around at Whitesaddle Air all day. So we went to the usual breakfast place at the Graham Inn in Tatla Lake and floated some ideas around. I finally found something that might be out of the rain altogether. Better still, there’s an official looking hiking trail so we could just show up and make the most of it. That something was Tullin Mountain. A forest summit on the northern end of Chilko Lake. It looked largely snow free, save for the top and the summit was supposed to be open with views of the lake. It sounded perfect given our situation.
Unfortunately, we didn’t have enough gas to get there, so after leaving Tatla Lake we made the commute down to Redstone to fill up. Another 30 minutes later and we were back on dirt roads heading towards the Chilko-Newton road. The roads were in great shape and we reached the trail head around 1:20PM. Equipped with some poles and snacks we headed off.
The nearby resort must have been maintaining this trail, because it was in great shape with no deadfall. We made great time up towards the first hints of snow; finally running out of dry ground around 1700m. Everyone took turns weaving through dry sections of forest, but eventually that gave way to continuous isothermal snow. The post holing commenced and proceeded for several kilometers until we reached the western ridgeline of Tullin. Here the sun had melted things out enough and we stood on dry land for the summit.
Sadly, the clouds had closed in and we only caught views of the lake. However, I was happy to just get out and see a new area. We followed our tracks back and then lead a more direct line with new post holes back to the dry section of trail. Once we were back on dry land it was a speedy return to the truck. Only one more bad weather day and we’d be off!
