Summit of The Castle

25 April 2004

I managed to sneak out of the city last weekend and up into the mountains with Heidi and her friend Caryn. I did some climbing in the Tatoosh range with an ascent up The Castle, one of eleven named peaks in the small range surrounding Mount Rainier. It's only a 6500 foot peak, but it's a long ascent up – several miles from the trailhead, with several very steep slopes. The warm weather made the snow very soft; at times, our boots would sink in to waist level and our ice axes had a tough time getting a grip. On the plus side, the summit was bare and dry and the climb up to the very top wasn't bad. It took us about five or six hours to get up to the peak, but less than three to make the downward trip (hurrah for glissading!)

I was kind of sick this weekend; it looked like a fairly easy ridge traverse to Pinnacle Peak, nearby, from The Castle, but my ankle, still sore from spraining it in a skydiving crash, the fact I was just finishing a nasty cold which kept me from work part of last week, and the terrible snow conditions made us decide to bail on the second peak...

*Images from the mountain*