Parked and camped at the Castle Creek campsite #7 which put me at approximately 10,200 feet, a good 5.5 miles from the summit. There were a variety of open dispersed spots higher up but this open site made the most sense given my late arrival before sunset. Hit the trail at 3:10am the following day and reached the end of the mining road by 5:40am and started up. I quickly encountered snow and used Cat Tracks to move quickly up the firm snow lines and into the rock islands along the path.

I diverted from the Castle Peak route and moved west toward the tarn in the basin, keeping my Cat Tracks on and using hiking poles equipped still with baskets, which later proved helpful on the ridge ascent. At the south end of the tarn, I opted for crampons and began to use my axe with one trekking pole while moving quickly to the snow chute connecting the basin and the ridge. A direct line to the top was not an option as it had melted out below the cornice area. The route, however, was still viable.

The route does look intimidating from distance but the angle of ascent is manageable with enough snow. By 7:30am, I kicked steps into the now softening snow and made it two thirds of the way before moving west onto the rocks, taking off the crampons and moving to the ridge.

By 8am, I was working up to the summit on a pretty easily defined trail that crested up to the first summit. It was an easy scamper over the couloir to the true summit.

Here on the true summit, I enjoyed the obligatory summit Coke, had a pair of younger climbers, who came over from Castle, take a summit shot and then I began working down the same route.

The glissade was fast but gave me an opportunity to practice steering and self-arresting with my axe on my way back down to the tarn. There were two other snowfields that I glissaded on the way down to the road and my exit back to camp.

Conundrum was a leftover from my October summit of Castle in 2022 and I was grateful that there was still enough snow to make the ridge, despite the weak winter and rapidly melting snowpack in the Elks.