Steven's Peak-bagging Journey

June 19, 2023

535m

Wenatchee, WA

There are several peaklets on the immediate west side of Wenatchee and Castle Rock is one of them. They are officially named, but do not boast notable prominence. Castle Rock has only 29 m of prominence. This peak does boast a somewhat impressive profile viewing from the city and that’s probably how it got named. Nonetheless Kostya and I were looking for a bonus objective to kill time in the vicinity of Wenatchee, and among those peaklets I picked Castle Rock as this seemed to be the shortest one. Earlier in the morning we had hiked Chelan Butte and Badger Mountain and it was only lunch time when we drove back down into Wenatchee.

The plan was as simple as hiking the trail to the top so there shouldn’t be much worth noting, but we changed our mind spontaneously. This objective was also not as short as I was hoping for, as it still requires over 200 m gain no matter what. The trail was well-constructed, but involved too many switchbacks that were definitely not needed for the above-average hikers. As much as I liked to make short-cuts we decided to stay on the trails to respect their trail work. Higher up we took the southern branch and then spotted a gully on the east face that might offer a more exciting way to the summit. A spontaneous decision was then made to at least check out that gully. Getting into the gully required plodding up some treadmill scree and the gully itself was harder than appeared. The rocks were down-sloping and questionable and the scrambling was class 4 at least for one spot. The difficulty eased above the constraint but we encountered one more crux near the very top. A vertical step (class 4) with decent exposure must be surmounted and I ended up having to give Kostya my poles so that I could force a layback move. Kostya climbed it a little bit differently and had no problem bringing my poles up, without even leashing them to his wrist.

There’s a rock pinnacle immediately to the south of the summit that might or might not be higher, so we had to give that a try as well. It appeared dauntingly airy but the scrambling turned out to be only 3rd class. Care must be taken as a mistake would be fatal. We took turn climbing and down-climbing that pinnacle and had lots of fun. The crux of this entire trip was actually to set up the tripod for a much-needed group shot (Kostya brought an actual tripod), thank to the gusting winds. We eventually used backpacks and a rock to help balancing the tripod and it worked. On the descent I again, made a spontaneous decision to short-cut down the NE slopes. The scrambling was at most class 2 but the terrain was loose. After rejoining the trail we jogged back to the car. While driving by Leavenworth Kostya decided to bag a P60m bump that obviously required trespassing so I stayed behind. I needed to sleep because I still had an hour of work at night, so I napped in the car. The rest of the drive was long and boring, but uneventful. I eventually got home with just enough time to take a shower before showing up at work at 9:30 pm.