Peak: | Castle Peak |
Route: | Castle and Conundrum |
Range: | Elk |
Posted By: | dereferenced |
Date of Info: | 1/18/2015 |
Date Posted: | 1/22/2015 |
Details |
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Climbed castle and conundrum with I Man last Sunday. There were some high winds on friday night, CAIC put the elk range at orange for saturday, then yellow again for sunday, and suggested that the biggest danger was windslab on top of surface hoar on north through east facing slopes. The route is safe from avalanche until about 11600' when you enter a narrow valley. East facing slopes we looked at had a harder layer on top of powder, the slab wasn't that thick or cohesive, we would easily step through it and the break wouldn't propagate. So, not terrible conditions, but not clearly safe, either. We did our best to choose a route that stayed off of any steep terrain. We also observed a number of slides on the south facing slope as you enter this narrow valley. These all looked like they began high at the rocks (i.e. triggered by warming), most didn't come down far enough to cross the path we'd hike, but 2 of the largest ones did. You wouldn't trigger one of these slides by walking on the low angle slopes below, but they could hit you if one happened to occur while you walked underneath. I'd call this unavoidable but low probability danger, and I'd assume you run a similar risk most times you come up here in winter. One member of our team turned around upon seeing the slide debris, while the other 2 felt the risk was acceptable and continued. We went up the ridge left of the standard summer route (same as labelled picture in Mad Mike's TR). We chose not to descend from the saddle between castle and conundrum and reclimbed castle to get back. We descended the standard summer trail instead of the ridge crest, and were able to stay on rock for most of the descent back to the base of the ridge. The road was packed from Ashcroft until the turnoff into the valley, 5 miles up. We used snowshoes from that point until the start of the northeast ridge, then microspikes on the ridge. |
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