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On Friday evening, I headed to the Elks with a group with a couple intentions in mind. First, to climb Castle, which would be a first 14er for two humans and one puppy in our group. Second, GladeWolf and I were going to pack in our ski gear and hope to hit Conundrum Couloir. Not sure what things would look like, I was prepared to do everything from a long, quality descent to carrying my skis up and down Castle. We parked just below the stream crossing late Friday night and got a few hours of sleep before hitting the road at 6:30a the next morning.
Castle was Tucker's first 14er!
After a few miles of road approach (including a lot of time looking at a really scruffy couloir that turned out not to be our line - thankfully) we came to the main snowfield and began the real climbing. Things seemed to go pretty quickly once we started up the ridge - some fun scrambling along the way. We were on Castle a bit before 11a. Approaching Castle with our couloir as backdrop Castle summit with obligatory puppy pose
After summitting Castle with the group Andrew and I did the traverse over to Conundrum.
Leaving Castle for Conundrum
Once there, we tagged the summit and got ready to descend. There was a cornice, but it eased significantly skiers left and allowed for a straightforward drop in.
Andrew is the small dot under the cornice
This is a kick-ass couloir and one of my favorite lines of the year. Consistent pitch, with only a few tricky runnels and a choke with some rocks in it that was probably only 10 feet wide but not for too long. Andrew approaching the choke
There were still a few spits of snow connecting the couloir to the headwall, which allowed us to descend all the way down to the high parking lot. Our friends who hiked down Castle had some fun glissading while we skied.
Thumbnails for uploaded photos (click to open slideshow):
y’all are nuts (in a good way) I’m a skier, too, but I couldn’t even imagine trying to go down that thing as we were climbing it yesterday w/ two tools! I thought the tracks we saw were from weeks ago...
Very impressive!
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I’m a skier, too, but I couldn’t even imagine trying to go down that thing as we were climbing it yesterday w/ two tools! I thought the tracks we saw were from weeks ago...