I hadn’t gotten to do as much technical climbing this summer as I hoped, but with fall setting in I could look beyond the high peaks and find some wonderful climbing at lower elevations. With that in mind I selected The Castle as an objective. Only 9,691 feet, but of a striking shape and located in the Lost Creek Wilderness, it held a little bit of everything: a bushwhack, plenty of scrambling and two pitches of roped climbing. I meet David and Jeff, two people I hadn’t climbed with before, and we carpooled to the trailhead.
We left the car and walked through the campground and then past a Boy Scout camp on a side trail. We then followed some signs toward a waterfall and then headed up the ridge to the right of the falls on a faint path. We were a little south of the route mentioned in the guidebook, which would have placed us in the gully to our right. But the views were great and the scrambling fun.
Once we were about equal to the base of The Castle’s cliffs, we contoured north to the obvious weakness in its defenses.
Once we reached the base of the cliff, in the vicinity of the southeast gully route we scouted out the rock above and located what looked to be the correct line of ascent. We’d brought 2 30mx8mm ropes which would prove perfect for our group of 3. I tied into both to use them as a twin rope system while David and Jeff each tied into the other end of one of the ropes. After checking everyone’s knots and harness buckles Jeff prepared to belay me and I set off up the cliff. The first few moves were easy to the left facing crack. The crack itself wasn’t very hard (5.4) and the approach shoes gripped well on the granite rock. Above the crux I headed left on easier ground into a third class gully and setup a belay on a large tree. David and Jeff soon followed and we untied from the ropes for the scrambling ahead.
We found some 4th class slabs and David had some difficulty with since he was wearing regular trail running shoes and not approach shoes with sticky rubber. Above this one spot of difficulty the terrain relented and we returned to easy boulder hopping.
After scrambling a little higher we oriented ourselves and identified the highest summit (or turret) of The Castle.
On the right was the tree-climbing route.
Instead of hauling ourselves up that poor tree, we went to the south end of the block and found a crack system that also went at 5.4. I led up this pitch again, having no difficulties other than solidly wedging my approach shoe in a crack which took a fight to release.
Jeff suggested I just untie the shoe, slip my foot out and then sling it for additional protection. I decided to place my faith in the cams instead and eventually freed my foot. Once on top I setup a belay around a rock horn and with another cam. David and Jeff quickly climbed up to the summit.
From the summit we had amazing views of the rock cliffs all around us.
Jeff signed the summit register for our group (no one else had signed it in months) and I checked out the existing slings for the rappel anchor. They looked new enough so I threaded and tossed the rope ends down and set off for the ground. David followed and then provided a fireman’s belay for Jeff.
We decided not to scramble up the other 3 turrets of The Castle, but to begin our descent and attempt Buffalo Peak.
We took a slightly different, and easier line on the way down whose main difficulty was downclimbing a slab.
Then it was back to the third-class gully to the tree at the top of the first pitch.
Before descending we talked about the best route down to avoid catching the knot in any cracks and then I was soon back at our packs (thankfully they were unmolested by any critters in our absence).
After the others descended we pulled the ropes and packed up our gear for the hike out. This time we took a route down that was closer to that marked in Roach’s guidebook and ended up at the Boy Scout camp for the walk back to our car.
After a short drive we reached the Stoney Pass Trailhead, which was unmarked except by a fire pit and spent ammunition. Leaving the trailhead, we marched right up the slopes, aiming southwest to begin our 3,000+ foot climb. The forest floor was littered with dead aspens which added additional challenges to the ascent. Part way up, we came to some interest rock formations and joked about running back down for the ropes and gear.
From these rocks we did have a good view of Wellington Lake and The Castle to the north.
The rest of the ascent was continued in the trees, mostly pines now and only as we neared the summit did the views return.
We had a few short scrambles to reach the true summit and then found a summit register again unsigned for about a month.
Clouds had rolled in, obscuring the view toward the higher peaks in the range to our west and the wind and few snowflakes convinced us to make our time on the summit short. We descended the same route back down, passing through patches of aspens at their fall peak.
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