Castle Pk – Northeast Ridge

Date: August 23, 2004
Elevation: 14,265′
Rank: 12th
Route: Northeast Ridge, Grade II, Class 2+, 4.5 miles, 2700ft vert.
GPS: N 39° 00.583′ W 106° 51.683′
Team: Matt Esser (Toid), Colleen Esser

Pre-climb: So, imagine with me if you will….you find the girl of your dreams and you get married and pack your bags to run off on your honeymoon which is in a lodge nestled in the mountains near Vail, CO, it has a wood-burning fireplace and champagne, strawberries and hot chocolate in the fridge, what do you do? That’s right! Wake up at 3am and start driving towards the Elk Mountains! (ummm, or something like that!)

Climb: We left Vail heading west towards Glenwood Springs, then headed East on Highway 82 towards Aspen. It took us just under 2 hours to get from our lodge to where we decided to park on the 4wd road up Castle Creek. The road goes up to 12,800ft, and my Blazer could have easily made it the whole way, but we wanted to actually do some climbing instead of driving to the top!

Due to being on our honeymoon, we were not correctly prepared for the colder weather that we encountered on the trip. As soon as we got out of the car, I wished I had a warmer jacket and some pants, along with gloves and stocking cap. Neither Colleen or I had any of those. Nevertheless, we got out and started hiking because hopefully it would get warmer as the sun came out and warmed up things.

Hiking the road up to 12,800 was pretty easy. It’s like walking on a paved sidewalk up and over a hill in town. However, as soon as we got into Montezuma Basin, navigating the rocks became our primary activity. It was fun at first, but quickly grew old. I don’t believe either of us enjoyed the old, rotten Elk Range rock that crumbles when you walk on it.

Eventually we made it up to the basin proper and decided to change routes at that point. The snow climb looked ridiculously steep, and so we opted for the harder (but snow-free) ridge. This turned out to be an excellent decision as the one person we saw attempting the normal route later in the day had to turn around because it was too steep.

Clouds rolled in and the wind picked up and we got colder. However, after a while, my legs were so cold that they no longer felt cold, and I know that’s not a good thing, but at least I could hike without having to think about how miserable I felt. About halfway up the ridge, (which wasn’t that bad at all), the sun came out for 10 minutes and that really warmed things up, but then it immediately went back into hiding behind the clouds for the remainder of the day.

The second mistake we made was not gain the ridge proper sooner. We tried to hike across the ridge not on top of the ridge, but a little below it, and it was MUCH harder. On the descent we stayed on the absolute top of the ridge and enjoyed ourselves hiking down.

Just after 3 hours us honeymooners made the summit! It’s a shame we couldn’t see more because the views of the Elk’s would have been gorgeous, but nevertheless we had fun signing the summit register as Esser’s for the first time.

On the way down we saw everybody wearing a lot more winter clothing and here we were in our shorts, and on our honeymoon. People thought we were pretty hardcore…oh, how little they knew….*smile*

All in all, it was a fun trip. If you do drive to the top of the 4wd road, then you just drove for probably 10 hours round-trip from Denver and climbed for 4. However, if you’re looking to stand on top of an Elk fourteener, then this is the one to do. It’s a good warm-up for the harder ones to come.

After arriving back to the Blazer, Colleen and I drove back to the lodge and sat in the hot tub for a couple hours and drank wine to help take the edge off and enjoy the rest of our honeymoon together.

Drive: 4h
Ascent: 3.25h
Summit: 5 min
Descent: 1.5h
Drive: 2.75h
Total: 6h