CASTLE PEAK


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Visit Jason's June 14th 2008 trip report from Castle Peak.




Anne-Marie hiked this with me after over a year since her last fourteener. We drove up the Montezuma Mine 4wd road and camped at 11,500. The stream crossing on this road was pretty deep, but it was spring at the time. The road gets pretty bad near the Pearl Pass turn off, but once past that it got pretty easy again. Our campsite was great with a rushing stream and some nice trees. In the morning we got up threw everything into the Jeep and drove to the Montezuma mine at 12,400 where we began our hike. From this point this is a very easy hike.





We got a fairly early start that morning so the sun was just starting to come up as we entered the Castle Peak basin.

The sunrise was beautiful to watch as we worked our way up the snow fields.

Since we started so high we were able to see the summit very early in the hike.

Conundrum Peak was off to our right and still had good snow in the couloir.

The couloir for the Northwest ridge looked good for a glissade, but not great for an ascent so we chose to ascend the Northeast ridge and descend the Northwest ridge.

As we hiked the Northeast ridge a lot of the Elk Mountains came into view. This is Pyramid Peak.

Smowmass Peak with North Maroon just to the Left of it.

Capital Peak.

We were by far the first ones to summit that morning. This is Anne-Marie taking her last steps onto the top. The haze in the distance was from some wildfires.

I love the red rock found in the Elk Mountains.

Looking back up at Castle from the Northwest ridge.

After descending a ways we realized we had forgotten to take a summit shot, so this is our near summit shot.

The glissade off the Northwest ridge turned out great. We were down in no time.

Looking back up at Castle from the basin below.

The snowfields on Castle are a lot of fun.

Looking down at the Montezuma Mine.

Back at our the Jeep this is looking up the road from the Montezuma mine.

Anne-Marie showing her excitement after finishing another 14er.

On the way out we got to see alot that we hadn't seen on our way in the night before.

There are lots of beautiful waterfalls up there.

A nice lake as well.

You are welcome to contact me with any questions regarding questions about, or problems with, this website. Just send me an e-mail at josh_friesema@hotmail.com.