Stuart Knob Scramble on 23-Sep-2026

Participants: Jack, Stephanie, Jenny, Serena

Trip Stats: Distance – 27.3km, total time – 9h 35min, elevation gain – 1588m

We began out of the parking lot at 7:45am with a brisk pace up the trail to Rockbound Lake, making it to the lake and sunshine in just over 2 hours. The larches around the lake were in colour display, and after a short break, we began the ascent up the gully to climbers right to access the peaks above (Castle, Stuart Knob, and Helena). Once past the steep push up in the gully, we reached the open plateau and were met with stunning views of Rockbound Lake, Castle Mountain, and the stunning golden larches.

From here, we continued our traverse over the wide-open plateau and unique terrain to our objective in the background. Although there is no defined trail through this terrain, you simply work your way back and up through gradual elevation to the final ascent slope to get to the col between Stuart Knob and Castle North summit.

Just below the final ascent push to the col, we decided that we could go to Castle North first and then traverse back along the broad expansive ridge to Stuart Knob. A few of the Ramblers chose some optional scrambling through the rock outcroppings, while others chose to take the well-defined trail to the col. Once on the col, the group went to climbers left to ascend the summit to Castle North, with a short scramble along the ridge to the true summit of Castle Mountain, which is roughly 300m higher than the Castle Mountain summit described in Kane’s book.

After enjoying the summit views, the group retraced their steps long the ridge, back to the col, and then were heading towards the second objective for the day, Stuart Knob.

At the base of Stuart Knob the group pushed to the backside of the summit block, to the obvious scramble route up. The rock here is loose and crumbly, so care needed to be taken to not knock rocks down. The short scramble takes you up to the summit almost immediately, and the summit in not nearly as wide as Castle North.

Once we enjoyed the summit views, we retraced out steps off the summit block, and then back towards the col to the brown scree, making for a quick decent towards the limestone plateau. We easily traversed through the plateau and made it back to the steep decent on skiers right in short time. The final decent through the trees is steep, but short and we enjoyed a short break at Rockbound Lake taking in the views and even saw two goats on the far side of the lake. After this we followed the rail through the larches back to Tower Lake, and then the long 8km of hiking back down to the car.