Castle Peak
NOTE: This text report is stored locally on CRMTR. If you find this report on the authors website, please let me know and I'll link to it instead...
August 20, 1994
Steve Parker
Who : Chip, Dave H., Rick G., and I
Chip and I jumped in the Subaru right after work, and drove up to "Difficult" campground just before Aspen on the road from Independence Pass, where we met Dave and Rick just before 10pm. They had one of those expandable trailers so we didn't even bother setting up the tent. Since we were going to be up pretty early, we basically just crawled into sleeping bags and went to sleep.
We got up a little late, around 6:00am, as it was still kind of dark when the alarm went off at 5:30am. We made two pots of strong coffee and had the infamous Quaker Oatmeal for breakfast (doesn't stick to your ribs, 'cause it never makes it that far down). We jumped into Daves Cherokee for the drive to Castle Peak. Going through Aspen early in the morning was a great way to see the town. This place must be spectacular in September, with all the leaves turning. I also noticed some of the most unbelievable castles (houses) that I have ever seen in the hills around this town.
From Aspen, we drove up Castle Creek canyon towards Castle Peak and took the right hand fork on a dirt road heading towards the peak. We continued about 2 miles up the road, and hit a rather tough spot in the road just past a waterfall on the left, and decided to park. As it turns out, this wasn't the smartest decision we've ever made, but it allowed us to stretch out before starting the serious climb. We walked the rest of a fairly nice, _driveable_ road (about 1.5 miles) up to the upper parking lot, and things finally got interesting.
There were still some significant sized snow fields in this area, a couple of which you have to climb to get to the base of the bowl that Castle and Conundrum Peaks preside over. Where ever there wasn't snow was covered by boulder fields, but they were fairly good size, and predominantly stable, making for a fairly easy climb up to the bowl. Standing at the base of the bowl, we could see a large snowfield covering the north-facing bowl that was probably 100 yards wide, and about 200 yards long (going up towards the rim). The "easy path" supposedly went up the right side of the bowl to the rim, but since it was covered in snow, would have been very difficult (but it made for a fun trip down). The harder trail switchbacked up the left rim of the bowl, which was a fairly steep, class 2 walk at the worst, considering there was a very well developed trail there. Once you got up on the rim, it was much more interesting. This was a fairly steep knife edge ridge, still climbing up, between 1 and 5 yards wide for most of the way to the top. A couple places got into medium class 3 scrambling/climbing for a few yards, but it wasn't too bad (don't bring a novice up this path, as they could freeze up).
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About 100 yards of climbing between class 2 and class 3 finally brings you to the top of the mountain, and as we crested, there must have been 20 people already there. We sat up there for about 1/2 hour, eating lunch, splitting the traditional summit beer (Lefthand Canyon Brewery, Sawtooth Ale), and taking pictures. While we were on the top, we started talking to a couple from Niwot (George and Jo), and between the two groups decided to try the other route back down (walking northwest down the ridge). At the saddle (before starting upwards to Conundrum), we dropped off to the right (towards the bowl) to the top of the giant snowfield. This was by far the most fun we had all day. Rick put on snowpants and slid on his butt, the rest hopped, slid and glissaded down the field to the bottom of the bowl. We all had giant smiles on our faces by the bottom of that descent. Climbing out of the bottom of the bowl was pretty easy, but we should have stayed to the far left of the valley, as we could have caught another long snowfield, but we boulder-hopped our way back towards the upper parking lot, picking up two more, much-smaller snowfields on the way back down. We started walking back down the road that actually was much steeper than we realized on the way up (I'm glad we didn't notice it on the way up!)
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When we got back to the truck, we took off our boots (nothing quite like that feeling), and said goodbye to George and Joe, starting the trip back down. We made it all of 100 yards when the waterfall came into view.
We parked the truck again, climbed up about 30 yards to the waterfall. Don't climb up the creek, but climb up the left hand bank. I'ts _MUCH_ easier. You have a nice view down the valley, and very open view of the road. The view of the road is important, as I'll discuss below. Rick and I stripped to our shorts and stuck our heads in the water. It was damn cold, but not as bad as it could have been. Dave finally decided to strip and "take a shower", and just as he did this, a group of old folks in about 10 or 15 jeeps and trucks came up the road. They stopped to take pictures of the waterfall, while we sat and watched. Dave was a little more "exposed" to the group than the rest of us, but basically sat with his shirt on his lap while we waited for them to go away.
The "jamboree" finally decided to move on after 15 minutes or so, and Dave was very happy that he could finally stand up to put his shorts back on. We climbed back down to the truck, and started the drive out. Back at the pavement, we ran into George and Jo again, who had to walk the two miles out, since they had parked their Saab at the bottom of the hill. They were pretty tired out due to the long road walk. We all agreed that we'd get together at a local pub once the pictures were developed, to share stories, and set up another climb with them that's currently planned for September.
All in all, it was a beautiful day, and one of the first climbs this summer (for me) where we weren't worried at all about afternoon thunderstorms. If you decide to climb this route, make sure you put sunscreen on the back of your neck and the back of your legs, since the sun is basically behind you the entire day.
