The Castle, again

After climbing The Castle a few weeks ago, I’d offered to go again and help some other climbers check this one off their list. Kevin took me up on the offer and also wanted to add some other peaks into the day. So after meeting outside Castle Rock, we headed west to attempt the strangely named South Noddle Head. Like The Castle, this one would require a little technical climbing so we stuffed packs full of ropes and harnesses for the short walk.

We noticed an easy looking gully that appeared to end near the summit, but decided to scramble up some slabs and cracks that we knew others had used to get to the top.

North Noddle Head stuck out of the trees in the distance and we knew there was some debate about which was higher. We had some hopes of at least checking out the climb up the North Noddle Head even if we didn’t get to attempt it today.

South Noddle Head drew back our attention as we realized we still needed to find a route to the top of the summit block.

On the west side we found a fat crack and lots of broken ground that looked to be about 5.0 climbing.

On the summit Kevin tried to solve the problem of which Noddle Head was taller while I concerned myself with finding a rappel anchor since I didn’t really want to downclimb our ascent route.

Once the anchor was built we took turns descending from the summit.

Before heading back down the slabs we took a closer look at the gully and found easy class 3 scrambling back to the base.

I started to head over to North Noddle Head but Kevin stopped me. It looked like we didn’t have enough time to explore that summit and still met a third person at The Castle. So we returned to the cars discussing climbing (of course) along the way. I foolishly admitted to Kevin that I’d let my Highpointers Club membership expire after moving to Colorado only to discover that he was the treasurer of that organization!

I followed Kevin on the drive to Wellington Lake, but just after passing the town of Deckers a motorcycle rider headed the other direction lost control and slid into Kevin’s path. Luckily, the driver separated from the bike and rolled behind Kevin’s car and came to a rest in the ditch on our side of the road. The bike took a direct line into Kevin’s front driver-side tire before being kicked back to the center of the road. Kevin’s SUV ramped up on the bike, then came down in the ditch and smacked a rock wall. I slammed on the breaks then jumped out of the car to assess the bike rider who was amazing fine, abet stunned and with a sore back. Kevin also made it out of the wreck with only a small cut from the airbags.

We found out the rider’s name was also Kevin and worked with the 3 other motorcyclists he was riding with to move the bike off the road. Unfortunately, no one had cell phone reception at this spot and help was a long time coming. We wondered if Pete would think we had an accident on our first climb and how long he’d hang around for at The Castle.

After about 2 and a half hours the police had finished taking statements and the tow truck was going away with the wrecked bike and SUV. In typical guy logic we figured we were both uninjured, we still had one working vehicle and just enough day light left. Somewhere in the back of my mind I wondered what Kevin’s wife would think.

We found a note from Pete that he’d gone home after giving up on us, so the two of us again lugged the climbing equipment up the steep track to the base of The Castle’s southeast gully route.

I climbed up to the belay tree then brought Kevin up. We hurried up through the 3rd and 4th class scrambling to the base of the final summit block.

Again, I avoided the “tree route” that Roach describes and ascended the cracks on the south end of the summit block. Kevin followed and soon we were enjoying the view of an eagle soaring just above us.

Kevin found just enough signal strength to try calling his wife. Of course, the call ended before he could say much more than that the car was totaled after an accident and that he was safe. That last part might not have gotten through okay. . .

After rappelling down from the summit we checked out the easiest of the other “turrets”. We thought about adding a 3rd to our day, but decided not to attempt the “leap of faith” that would be required. We’d probably tempted faith enough today as it was.

We rushed back to the belay tree and rappelled the first pitch then hurried out to the car. Thankfully, we made it back at 6:20, well before the 7pm gate closure. After a long and winding drive I took Kevin back to Colorado Springs then turned north to home.

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