Castle Peak

Route: Northeast Ridge
Posted On: 10/26/2024, By: Cthulhu 2008
Info: Road is mostly dry (some icy sections) and drivable to the Pearl Pass/ Castle Creek Junction. Some snow, but nothing too crazy. Should stay accessible for a quick summit bid Sunday and Monday before the next storm rolls in and then we might have winter conditions until the spring... so get after it soon! 

Route: Castle and Conundrum
Posted On: 10/9/2024, By: sean23
Info: Mostly avoidable snow and ice up high on the route. We brought spikes but used them only for ascending the snowfield on the headwall. Avoiding snow higher up does require some class 3 moves, but overall, the peaks are still good to go! 

Route: Northeast Ridge
Posted On: 10/2/2024, By: nutella262
Info: More icy patches on the ridge than I was personally comfortable with so I turned around at ~14k. Perhaps avoidable by someone with a stronger skill set and a higher risk tolerance. Conundrum from the saddle up looked completely dry. 

Route: Castle and Conundrum
Posted On: 9/30/2024, By: NativeTransplant
Info: You can climb these peaks without touching any snow or ice if you want to. Trail has small and inconsequential spots of snow that you can avoid. No traction devices or ice axe required. Downclimb scree slope from saddle is fine if you are comfortable scree-surfing; otherwise, go back up castle. Stock tacoma made it to 11,200' easily, and could probably make it to 12,800' without issue. 

Route: Castle and Conundrum
Posted On: 9/29/2024, By: dakotasmama
Info: Alpine lake looks terrible, water is a sickly green color and the snow on top is covered with the invasive algae that turns it pink. Permanent snow field is virtually non-existent. 

Route: Castle and Conundrum
Posted On: 9/26/2024, By: CodyAnschutz33
Info: For the conditions on the road, I was able to drive my Tacoma all the way up to 12,800 feet without much difficulty and no snow. For the actual route, as the previous conditions update said, the snow made this a lot longer and more difficult than usual, both in route finding and in making a few areas slick. I was the first one up and was trailblazing through the snow the entire route. Though you could get by without traction, I found it to be helpful on the way up as I would step, posthole, and slide almost every step and there were a few "sketchy" areas because of the snow/ice. Wish I would have brought my gaiters as the snow was deeper than anticipated (~6-8 inches at parts) and my feet were soaked by the end. Fun and beautiful day in the mountains overall though! 

Route: Castle and Conundrum
Posted On: 9/16/2024, By: BricART
Info: The snow from the previous days made this a little more sketch than normal. While there wasn't a lot of it, there was snow/ice on portions of the use trail up the East ridge of Castle and down the North ridge on the way to Conundrum. It was easy enough to go around, but I definitely got into some (very very easy) class 3 terrain. More snow this week will only complicate things if any of it sticks. 

Route: Castle and Conundrum
Posted On: 9/8/2024, By: ColoNativeGal
Info: Summer conditions. Couple of patches of snow on the headwall, a little slippery in the morning, but didn't need traction. Soft in the afternoon. One tiny glissade patch near the bottom/base people created. One person ascended the saddle gully and said it was awful and sketchy with some class 3 moves and didn't recommend descending that way. A couple of other groups did descend that way and we heard tons of rock fall. As the route describes it's best to regain Castle; we were glad we did. TH road is as described, see my TH condition update for more details. 

Route: Castle and Conundrum
Posted On: 8/30/2024, By: CraigE
Info: It's a great time of year to hike Castle and Conundrum. The headwall was nearly snow-free, and there's a pretty good trail up through the headwall talus if you can find it (for me it was easier to see on the way down than the way up). After the traverse to Conundrum, I backtracked and re-summited Castle, and it seemed like a better choice than descending directly from the saddle (which was mostly dry). I'm attaching photos of the headwall and saddle for reference. This route is rated Difficult Class 2, but the the most straightforward route has several Easy Class 3 moves. To keep it Class 2, you have to take some less-stable bypasses. 

Route: Castle and Conundrum
Posted On: 8/20/2024, By: Dbrink
Info: Parked at 12,500 in a modified Tacoma. Saw plenty of stock toyotas up near 12.4-12.5k parking areas. As another commenter mentioned, the narrow off camber section near the end of the road isn't worth the pucker factor for me personally. Happily hiked that section. Saw a subaru crosstrek past the junction, props to them. Big rut at campsite #7 which is probably the big deterrent for most crossovers. Trail was great, skipped the gully exit like the description recommended and re-summitted castle. 5 hours RT truck to truck. 

Route: Castle and Conundrum
Posted On: 8/17/2024, By: Pest
Info: Road: Only 2 really challenging obstacles for smaller vehicles: a big rut after campsite 3 or so and the creek, which is reasonably low right now. Drove our stock full size 3500 truck up to the Pearl Pass/Montezuma Mine junction no problem. Watched a stock RAV4 hybrid also drive to the same point, but he had to use a lot of skinny pedal and may have bottomed out a couple times. A Subaru could probably do the same, but YMMV, it's risky. Castle Peak Trail: This should definitely be relabeled as a solid class 3 route. The most obvious, safest, and most used route has multiple class three moves. There are easier class 3 mountains, like Uncompagre. Calling this a difficult class 2 sets a lot of novice hikers up for a dangerous situation they may not be ready for. 

Route: Castle and Conundrum
Posted On: 8/9/2024, By: joshuahutton
Info: Was able to drive all the way to 12,500 ft in my slightly lifted tacoma with 33s. From there, the road gets a bit too skinny for my liking with the steep drop off. The road should be fine for a stock 4wd up to the bridge. After that, you need a bit more clearance. Pretty easy hike overall starting from that elevation. Reached Castle just before sunrise. Going to Conundrum is a no brainer. Only took about 40 extra minutes total. Super easy. Hardest part was the loose rock on the downhill, but poles helped. I didn't do the long glissade since the snow field looked rocky and broken up into multiple sections. So I climbed back over Castle for the way back. About 5 hours total hiking and some breaks at the peaks. 

Route: Castle and Conundrum
Posted On: 7/29/2024, By: berko89
Info: Shortcut off the Conundrum ridge was looking sketchy (see pic), we didn't take it and didn't see anyone else take it that day either. We glissaded down lookers left of the headwall though (see pic) and it was fine. 

Route: Castle and Conundrum
Posted On: 7/24/2024, By: Mt_DAN
Info: Route is in good shape if you go northeast ridge to south ridge and back. The short cut off the saddle between the two is a little ify looking. Lots of wet bare rock down there. Snow is manageable on the headwall without micro spikes and the glidssade was awesome! Might only be another week before its too rocky. Conundrum coulior looked okay too. Wish Id brought boots. 

Route: Northeast Ridge
Posted On: 7/23/2024, By: Emilygrippin
Info: Despite the weather warnings, we had a beautiful day hiking Castle Peak. Many hikers opted for the alternate route to the hikers left, but we decided to stick to the route outlined on 14ers.com and cross the snowfield. I heard from other hikers on the trail that the alternate route is much more difficult. I would recommend trekking over the snow; it saves time and can be done without spikes (spikes were helpful though).