Leaving the city at 7:30 am meant that we were on our trail by 9:15. A cool 8 degrees but cloudless and amazingly clear sky were ours for the day.

Checked out the very old-fashioned biffy - compare to the super modern ones built at Lake Louise!! Rather primitive but very clean if a tad smelly.

The trail winds uphill for about 5 km as an old wide road, easy grade and flanked by flowers of all kinds, lots of bronze bells, columbine with smaller pockets of many others, even a couple of calypso orchids. The trail becomes narrower and soon there were views across the ravine to Helena Ridge.

The muddy sections turned out to be almost dry and soon we reached the first lake. No mosquitoes, no wind as we followed the trail to the right to the final clumb up to Rockbound Lake, another 90 m elev. gain.

The only hazard we found was the Tower Lake outlet creek which had been nicely bridged by previous hikers.

Rockbound Lake was perfect in its setting, a gentle breeze and vivid blue sky while we took our 1 1/2 hour lunch. 3 of the group did some extra by going to the far side of the lake and ascending the lower slope of Helena Ridge for better views of the plateau above the lake.

After lunch some of us wandered over to the edge of the escarpment to look down the valley where we had great views of Pilot, the valley and the east end of the Castle Mtn complex. On our return we had a short tea break just before reaching the wide part of the trail. Then it was on & on to finally reach the cars shortly after 4 pm. Thanks to Barb, Aldis, J.,Robert, Linda, Brieta, Melissa, Francisco, Maria and Nardi for joining me on this great day. C/s/p Dorothy-Ann

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