Seven of us met in town for the drive out to Castle Jctn. The drive was a little challenging what with there being dense fog from the edge of the city to beyond Jumping Pound Creek and then the highway was a tad icy from Red Earth Creek PL to Castle Jctn. At Castle Junction we met our eighth participant from Canmore. We did the car shuffle placing two cars at the Vista Lake trailhead.


Setting out from Castle Junction

From here it was getting to the work at hand which was to climb up to the lower Twin Lake.


Climbing to Twin Lakes

This was accomplished fairly easily because there already was a snowshoer track put in, no doubt from our own Ramblers Carolyn who did this as a snowshoe trip a couple of weeks ago.


Balancing on snow on top of a log bridge (Carl tumbled off)

We were up to the lower Twin Lake by about 12:15, went to have a look at the lake and then went into the trees for lunch at the trail junction.

From here the next part of the trip was to climb to upper Twin Lake. This proved to be a little challenging for six of our group who decided that they didn't need to follow a trail. The coordinator being at the back of the group and one participant who decided they weren't up for a bush bash managed to find the trail and skied up to the upper Twin Lake. Here they proceeded to find the trail for the next section up the ridge, put a handrail trail along the lake(just in case), go back and look for the lost six, lint their belly button and other things sundry until the lost six finally appeared on the trail they should have been on and perhaps looking a bit sheepish. We regrouped took the necessary lake photos and proceeded to climb towards the ridge shoulder. Here we managed to perform a loop-de-loop on our own trail until we finally got it sorted out as to where we wanted to go. Once this was done we emerged onto the ridge at exactly the spot where the trail goes over (Wow!).

At Arnica Summit

Now came the fun part. First ski down to Arnica Lake. The snow was wicked(champagne powder) and a number of our group carved beautiful turns down to here through the trees which were reasonably well spaced. After Arnica Lake the trees became closer together which made it a little more difficult for some. The snow remained good until we got down to the old forest fire burn.


Tele Turns descending from Arnica Lake

From here the snow deteriorated to very uneven with many of us performing thrills and spills as we attacked our way down the slope. Finally, we came across the up snowshoer trail I believe put in by another Rambler Ivan's trip again a few weeks ago. We were able to follow this down to Vista Lake some of us skiing it with skins and some without.

We arrived at Vista Lake at dusk (5:30pm) and skied down the lake to where the trail heads up to Hwy. 93. At the end of the day and into the fading daylight, we climbed through the TL-6 section of the trail(a rockband with a fairly good dropoff).

Crescent Moon and Venus guiding us home

The last of us arrived at the cars just as it was getting dark @ 6:15pm.

It was nice to see some new faces for this type of trip and let's hope we see them out again. Participants were Carl, Philip, Shirley, Shirley's guest Frank,Rhoda, Sim, Christine, and Bob C/S. Thanks to Carl for the piccies.

Why is this called Lower TWIN Lake?

And why is this called Upper TWIN Lake?

We are not sure if Carl's fall off the log has caused these images, or perhaps the camera was damaged by his fall.

Bob.