It wasn’t going BOOM at all (except for once perhaps, on the way up).
Starting from a parking lot not far South of Castle Junction, you head up through the trees, then up and down a meandering path through the trees til you hit the lake about 5km later. When we went up there were only a few sets of footprints there, some of which had obviously given up after a kilometre or so. The lake was mostly frozen (except for those few disconcertingly slushy sections), and had a few inches of snow on it.
There are a few ice routes up the end up the lake too, that were looking blue and climbable.