Trip Report - The Castle

My son asked me to take him camping, and I've been wanting to climb The Castle for a while now, so I decided to do a little car camping with The Boy and we'd summit the majestic rock together. We decided to hit the road on Friday night, so we could get an early start on Saturday.

The Castle.

We hit the campground just a bit after sunset. This was actually the first time I've ever stayed in an established pay-per-night campground, so I can't comment on how it compares to others. The people running the place were very nice, however, and when we told them our plans to climb the castle, they assigned us a spot near the trail that would also be away from all the partiers. We made camp at site #62 under the glare of my Subaru's headlights and bedded down to the hoots and hollers of the serious partying going on down by the lake.

Saturday morning we woke to see The Castle looking down at us in the early light of day. Although it was only about half a mile away as the crow flies, I knew the approach swung way around towards the far side and that we'd have a little bit of a hike ahead of us. We ate and were on the trail, with our day packs, shortly after 8:00am. To hit the trail from Camp 62, you just hike straight up the hill and it's only about 20-30 yards from the campsite.

The Castle in the morning sun from Camp 62.

The trail is pretty well traveled and marked up to the waterfall. There is a somewhat confusing junction with The Scouts trail, but if you just stay heading straight you'll see another sign pointing you towards the waterfall and The Castle. The waterfall is very small, but cool in the way that it is slowly rubbing away at the large rock it flows over. Heading upstream from the falls will get you to the last sign you'll see marking the trail to The Castle.

Bridge at the waterfall.

The trail is fairly easy to follow, with logs and sticks lining the sides, but there are a couple spots you might wander off of it. The Castle looms to your right hand side and the tendency to want to drift over towards it is strong. But, the trail meanders off to the left and up and over another ridge, to skirt around some steep rocks. Just remember that the correct approach, while longer, is better than bushwhacking up a boulder field. Plus you get some great views of the mountains and rocks on the other side. Towards the top of the mountain, at the base of the jutting rocks that make up the summit, the trail sort of peters out. If you keep circling around towards the back (west) side, you will see a couple cairns to help you along.

Looking out SW where the trail starts to dissolve.

At this point you're looking at some pretty exposed class 4 scrambling, maybe even some low class 5 stuff. There's a cairn at the bottom of a promising crack to get up the first bit of scramble. It's definitely doable, and we played with it a bit, but ultimately deemed it a bit too reachy and bone crunchy for coming back down... At least for us. Pushing further around the side, we found another crack, that was still a bit of a stretch, but had a nice shrub to help us along and was a little less steep.

This is the marked access we decided not to use.

Once up the first bit, there's a little traverse on a large slanting rock. It's not too steep, but it's a good drop off the edge if you tangle up your feet and tumble off it. Once around this it's a pretty straight forward scramble up some cracks, dodging some downed trees and around some dead ones that are still standing, to the base of the main rocks that make up the various summits. A sort of spire was on our right (the far southern edge of The Castle) with the main rock and true summit on our left.

Scramble up between the summit and the spire.

There's a large crack leading up to the "spire" that's a pretty decent scramble. As I was debating it, Kellan was just going for it. I'd been trying to teach him the critical mountaineering principle about getting back down (especially since we had no rope), but he shimmied right up it, much to my horror. Of course I had to follow, and going up I knew descending would be sketchy. It's a nice flake, but it's also a death drop, exposed and some real reaches to get up. Once at the the top, I had butterflies in my stomach the whole time thinking about getting down and wishing I had brought my rope. We looked up at the top of the spire, but there was no way we were doing that without gear. The view from here was awesome. Coming down was as sketchy as I predicted, but we made it. Kellan scraped up his legs a bit as he straddled the flake coming down and I helped him on the stretchier spots.

From here, we followed the crack up and to the right to the spire.

Spire exposure. A bit of a drop.

Now we looked up to the left, seeing if we could find a less scary way to get to the summit. There's a couple good sized cracks, with relatively minor exposure and we hiked up them without difficulty. From there we traversed a little slab to another outcrop. This put us about 10-12' above where we were on the spire. We looked around and saw a way to maybe get a little higher, but we figured it wasn't worth it. We didn't think we could get to the summit that way and felt like we were already pressing our luck with our descent.

The summit, as seen from the spire.

The spire, as seen from as high as we got on the summit side.
We were right where the 2 flat rocks on the bottom
left of the frame are, in our spire summit bid

On the scramble back down, we had a little trouble following our ascent line, but picked it out after a few minutes. Had a bit of a stretch to reach the base, but no major issues. Following the trail down was pretty straight forward, but there is one part where a water runoff meets the trail and follows it for a bit. The trail turns and if you're not paying attention it's easy to keep following the runoff path down. We missed it and had to back track a bit. We put up a cairn that will hopefully help others avoid our mistake, but who knows if it will last the crazy weather we've had since.

Large piece of quartz on the trail.

There and back was just about 3.5 miles and took us about 4 hours, with stops and wanderings here and there. Being after Labor Day, we didn't see anyone else on the trail the whole day. We were back in plenty of time to go for a swim in the lake and do a little bouldering around the camp. You could easily head up on a Saturday morning, knock out this trip and be back in town before dark if you wanted to. My only regret is that I didn't bring a rope. With just a 20-30 meter rope and some basic gear, we could've pushed for the true summit and not had to worry so much about getting down safely.

Future project.

Race Review - Warrior Dash

The Warrior Dash prides itself on many things. Beer and beards, not least of all. They also tout themselves as "The world's largest obstacle race series", and from what I saw, that seems to be the case.  They typically have races in multiple locations every weekend all around the world, and this event was packed with people. We began our Warrior journey early on Saturday morning with an hour and a half long trek to the Copper Mountain ski resort, where the event was being held.

The $10 parking went smoothly, and they had just the right amount of people directing traffic. All too often I see too few (sometimes none) or too many people making event parking a real drag. From the lot it was about a quarter mile walk up to the start area, so no buses or shuttles to wait around for. Here there was a little bit of a choke point as you had to squeeze past the mob getting ready to run, so you could get to the festival area and registration building beyond.

Registration was well organized and went smoothly. At this point, looking at box upon box of racer's packets, is when I realized how large of an event this would be. We hiked back to the truck just in time to see a heat go off, and got bibbed up for our run.

Goofy headgear: Mandatory.

We filed in for our 0900 heat and made our way towards an empty spot near the front. The organizers announced that they would be splitting our heat and holding about half the people back for a 0930 start time to alleviate some pile ups. This is always a good idea, in my humble opinion, and newer race organizers could learn a lot from the "been there, done that" wisdom of the more established races. Two of us made the 0900 cut and our pals behind us said it looked like they just let as many people as could get through in the first 15 minutes, or so, then cut it off and let the rest go at 0930.

Wise to break up a heat this large.

Giant booming fireballs signaled our start and we began running downhill right away. Then we rounded a hairpin turn and started back up the same hill. This all worked out well to thin out the pack and soon we were off the road, through some brush, and onto the dirt trails would make up the majority of the race course.

Go time!

Now the important stuff: The obstacles. Warrior Dash had some really creative balance obstacles, a lot of walls and ropes, a cool cargo net traverse and the obligatory mud pit crawl. They also made good use of the hilly terrain. My partner, who had run at the same venue a few years prior, said this year's course wasn't nearly as steep, and made use of a wider path. This was all very good, as there were really no backed up sections where I couldn't get past slower people. Speaking of slower people, not a lot of walkers at Warrior Dash compared to some other races I've run. Most people seemed to "Warrior up" and push pretty hard.

Also of note, is Warrior Dash's superb timing system. They not only have the start and finish mats, but checkpoint maps scattered throughout the course to catch any cheaters along the way. An important consideration, especially for a race that gives out awards and free entries to top finishers. This system is not foolproof, however, as I will explain in a moment.

Cool balance obstacle.

The last mile of the course began to head back downhill and eventually wound back onto pavement and concrete through some of the resort's lodging, where people on the balconies were cheering us on. Coming around a sweeping corner, the fire jump came into view. I figured I was near the end, so I kicked it up a notch and went into my "finish strong" sprint. In a clear case of cunning, viking trickery, the final push began to seem rather long, and after a sharp turn I could see the end... at the top of a (relatively) steep hill. It took every once of willpower I had left to run up that hill to the finish line. I really wanted to slow to a walk. Well played, Warrior Dash, well played indeed.

This hill was a killer.

I had resolved to run the whole thing and my goal was to finish under 30 minutes. But, alas, there was one really steep hill (see above) that forced me into a walk and I came in at 32:25. Dave was just a few minutes behind me and we grabbed our free beer while we waited for the other half of our party to finish. They came across the line together, about a half hour later, suspiciously clean.

90 out of 7500. Not too shabby for an old dude.

Now the Warrior Dash isn't a particularly muddy race, but there is mud. And it's in a rather long and large pit you need to crawl through. Come to find out these acquaintances of ours (I cannot call such people friends at this point) made an "executive decision" to skip the mud pit. The lamest, lameness, since lame came to Lametown. Since there's no timing pad at the mud pit, so there was no penalty against their times. Now, they weren't in any danger of winning this event, but still: totally lame. Did I mention how lame this is? So Warrior Dash organizers, if you're reading this, take note!

You're not coming away from this clean.

This was the only obstacle that got a little backed up.

Anyway, off to the really important stuff: The festival grounds. Now Warrior Dash is certainly an above average race. Their festival area is top of the line. Multiple beer stands, food vendors everywhere (turkey legs FTW), some beer, games, beer, sponsor tents, more beer and I even spied a wet bar. All nestled in the beautiful clean air and views of the Rocky Mountains. This event pulled in over 7,500 people and we quickly became saddened that we had to leave early due to prior commitments. We immediately vowed to return next year and stay at a lodge to fully absorb the awesome after party.

Party time, fo sho.

The people we talked to throughout the day were almost all repeat racers and I can see why. Warrior Dash is a must do race, in my book, with fantastic organization, a well thought out course and a ripping festival area. We've already signed up for next year's race and we will make a full weekend out of it. Warrior Dash is quickly becoming my favorite race and I foresee many happy returns.

Success!

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