This was another lesson in the “It’s quite hard to take a lot of photos when you’re the only one towing a Chariot and looking after an offspring” factor.
Rockbound Lake is just near Castle Junction, tucked in behind Castle Mountain. And I’d skied it before, pre-Moosling. At the time it had seemed like a fairly easy day-trip, a nice little easy jaunt. Towing a Chariot made the whole thing a lot more uphill. The hills! They didn’t stop! My legs! Ow ow!
It was a gorgeous blue bird day though, and lovely and warm (about 5oC in town), pretty much Spring weather. And we only came across two other people there the whole day! On a weekend!
Getting the Chariot up there was pretty easy, with a wide trail that wasn’t too off-camber. But then the trail swung around towards the west, and the skin trail became a narrow little winding path. Then I started to need help getting past trees and tree wells, and getting up some of the steep little rises. Do-able, but if I was to ski there with a Moosling again, I might use the Ergo instead.
We stopped for lunch in the sun. The sun had other ideas, and buggered off behind the peak about a minute after we sat down. And then half the party headed on to Tower Lake, while the other half went “blow this for a joke, snow-covered lakes are boring”, and started working the Chariot back through the trees (with only a few sideways Chariot on the snow incidents on the way) and stopping and chatting in any handy sunny patches they found.
We met up in time to do the fast descent together, flying down the icy track without incident to find the sun again in the carpark. Ow, my legs.
Elevation gain (to Tower Lake): About 650m?
Distance (to Tower Lake): 15.5km return