CASTLE PEAK - ROCK EMPIRE
​
Sept 9-10
Climbing has this uncanny ability to get crazy ideas in my head. At first I generally pass them off as ridiculous and then I move on with my day, but pretty soon it’s all I can think about until I can go complete whatever stupid plan I dreamt up. That was the case with Castle Peak.
Earlier in July, a friend asked me to join him on a trip to Windsor Ridge (where Castle Peak resides as the northwestern outlier. Not to be confused with Castle Mountain in Banff). He had looked at the peak, made up of two impressive towers for a long time, always wanting to climb it. But as he stared at the towers, he doubted his ability to lead the fairly unknown and confusing crack system up the southeast face that had only seen 3 previous ascents. So, when he brought the idea to me, I was happy to rope gun for him. Without too much trouble, we bagged the peak and got the 4th ever ascent of the tower, in heinously strong winds to boot.
I went home after that trip very satisfied with our success and without much desire to return. It was absolutely worth it, but it didn’t seem fun enough to go back. It was a full day of biking, then slogging up a mountain with full bags of rock gear, just to get in 40m of pretty mediocre climbing. And so I posted photos and documented the trip the best that I could, because I knew I wasn’t going to be returning anytime soon, or so I thought. It wasn’t long after that trip that I found myself dreaming about climbing the wide and obvious crack that I had spotted to the right of the route that I had climbed. Due to its steep and intimidating nature, the offwidth/chimney hadn’t seen any ascents (even though it was the most obvious line). It was at this point that I sent some photos over to Dillon to discuss the possibility of giving it a go.
In an age of busy crags and sharing alpine routes with other parties, Dillon and I have found immense joy in searching for obscure and possibly unclimbed lines in the Rockies. They’re often loose and a little bit scary, but the reward of getting out where few or no other people have climbed before is the biggest reward. Not surprisingly, Dillon jumped at the chance, and we made plans to have a go at it.
The crack had seen one attempt before, but the party bailed due to extreme winds and lack of gear. The crack is very wide, and so protecting it adequately requires extremely large cams, much larger than what the average climber carries on their harness. We were able to borrow and buy enough big pieces to feel confident enough to take it on.
And so the day began in the early afternoon, with a third partner joining us for the adventure. I got out of school around noon, picked up Dillon and drove out to Beaver Mines where we met up with Daniel and continued the drive into the Castle Crown Wilderness. There is a long section of decommissioned road that has a number of washouts requiring a 4x4. Most people will 4x4 most of the road, then stop at the first significant washout and continue via bike from there. We didn’t want to deal with 10km of biking, so we drove the whole way in, despite the warnings I had received from other friends who had tried the same. The drive went surprisingly well, and we were able to park right at the trailhead. From there, we followed up a trail for a couple kilometres and a few hundred metres elevation gain, where we met up with a dry creek bed. We boulder-hopped up the creek for a while and then headed north, bushwhacking basically straight up for a little over an hour, where we topped out on a large plateau, two-thirds of the way up to the peak. By this point we had an hour or two left of daylight, and even though our original plan was to continue up to the peak to set up a bivy, we opted for the much more sheltered and comfortable plateau for the night.
After a comfortable and warm night, we collected the rock gear that we’d need for the day, and pushed upward into the unsheltered alpine where we’d find winds that words will forever fail to describe. As I look back on my trips up to the peak, and talk to others about their experiences up there, I don’t think there has been a calm day on Windsor Ridge. Upon reaching the tower, its grandeur struck us once again. Vertical on all sides with strange, pocketed, and loose rock that is only held together with some willpower and a whole lot of luck, the impressive monolith cannot be seen without inspiring awe.
We worked our way to the southeast wall, where we came upon our route, which towered straight above us. One look inspired nerves immediately; we knew that we weren’t taking on a simple endeavour. Fortunately for me, Dillon was able to ignore the wind and the cold enough to want the lead, at a time that I couldn’t want the lead less. We procrastinated for quite a while, not wanting to put on the rock shoes or stand in the wind, but we soon realized that we had to get on route quick so we could get off the mountain before the impending evening storm arrived.
On Friday, when Dillon arrived in Lethbridge, he realized that he had forgotten his harness. I had an extra for him, but it was an unpadded webbing gym rental style harness with only 1 gear loop and the words “Rock Empire” in large letters along the swami belt. So as he racked up for the climb, all the gear that would normally hang on a gear loop had to hang over his shoulder on a gear sling instead; A problem that would normally not be so bad, but with such large gear it was quite an undertaking, and bit of comic relief for Daniel and I as we belayed in the cold.
We worked up a short exposed bit of 4th class that lead us into the somewhat sheltered belay. We were perched about 10-15 metres off the ground in a small alcove up the wall, so I placed a single piece to protect us all if Dillon fell before getting in a piece on lead, a very real possibility on such suspect rock. Dillon launched into the void, making a few delicate face moves, selecting his movement carefully as he worked through the initial section while avoiding some rotten holds. He placed a piece in the hand crack and made it into the first big alcove, first section done. From here, an overhang with a thin seam loomed above his head. He took some time to suss out the moves, placed a couple pieces and began working the bulge. Before committing to the big move over the bulge, he bounce tested a cam to see how much he should trust it, and it promptly failed. Luckily, his other piece held, giving him the confidence to move upward. Dillon grunted up the overhang, struggling with all the gear hanging off of him, stemming on the walls and jamming the crack in the middle, overcoming the difficult section and continuing up the remainder of steep body-width crack. The rest of the climb was pretty straightforward, with some chimney moves and offwidth jams that weren’t too difficult, but still required some thought to move through them. Before long, Dillon had finished the climb and brought Daniel and I up, where we celebrated on the summit after completing the first ascent of a surprisingly high quality climb.
We didn’t stay up there long as the winds whipped, nearly taking us right off the summit. The register was signed as we named the route “Rock Empire” in a nod to Dillon’s forgetful packing and the horrible harness he had to endure because of it. We quickly got on rappel and at the base of the towers we briefly looked at a couple of other cracks that have the potential to be climbed, but considering the time of day and the weather that we found ourselves in, we packed up and headed out with smiles way too large for how cold and miserable we were. The walk back to the car was pretty straight forward, following basically the same route that we had used on the way up.
And so here I am, reminiscing about a rather miserable trip with a happy ending, in a place that I should never want to return. But just two weeks after the fact, I’m already thinking about those other lines up there that are just begging to be climbed, and I know that next year when the snow begins to melt, Dillon and I will return to Castle Peak, despite the long walk and relatively short and mediocre climbing, all for the sake of adventure and avoiding the crowds in the final frontier of the Rockies.
​
Go climb a rock
-C.G
