This was a mountain I've had my eye on for a while, but in other peoples reports they had mentioned you had to cross Millcreek a few times and I never found a time to do it in the fall when the water was lower, but figured today would be a good day as the water should be low in the winter. We have also had a unseasonably warm winter and figured the snow on the mountain would be less coupled with all the wind I figured the south facing slopes would be free of snow. We brought snow shoes but upon arrival at the gas well we figured we wouldn't need them (later we figured we probably should have taken them). Luckily the creek bed was void of any water and any water was pretty much frozen on the first few kilometers. Once we reached the back slopes we noticed there was a little more snow. I think the back angle of the mountain actually keeps a lot of the snow when the wind pushed it west and it settles in the drainages that you use to climb the mountain. So we took a drainage that wasn't the usual approach from a few other peoples trail reports. It got a little cliffy near the top and we had a few nerve wracking moments as we scaled cliffs that had snow on them. Also there was probably a little bit of an avalanche danger in some areas but we stayed mostly clear of them and near the top there were a few sections that we had to kick in footprints into the steep angled snow. This could have been quite dangerous if we had slipped. Luckily upon descent we were able to take the easy descent route which was much clearer of snow but we ended up doing a lot more post holing in the creek bed at the bottom and since the day took us longer than we had thought we had to use headlamps getting out for the last couple hours. But we made it and I have not crossed this one of the list and won't have to try it and get wet in Millcreek.
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| Starting point at a gas well |
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| First frozen creek we had to cross |
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| This is mill creek that we had to cross several times but was void of any water |
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| For a good portion of the hike there was a packed down trail from someone who had snow shoed up previously that made the post holing much less but eventually we had to post hole |
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| There were many snow covered drainage basins that were full of snow, the accumulated snow pushed from the west winds made for some of these being pretty hard to trudge through |
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| This is where we decided to go up, we went up the middle and after the trees on the left we went behind them then took a clear small ridge angling up to the high point in the middle |
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| This was side hilling over to the ridge we angled up, this was where the avalanche danger was probably fairly high |
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| Once we gained the wind swept small ridge we took to the top I noticed this cool rock |
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| This was on of the cliff bands we had to navigate around on the way up, we went to the far right and took a ledge back to almost the middle of the picture |
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| One of the many picture I took of Castle and Windsor today |
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| This was the section we had to toe kick into the steep snow to get up, luckily it wasn't very long |
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| Here is an angle looking up from the previous picture, luckily there were clear parts every now and then, we definitely didn't go up the center of this picture, we stayed on the rocks and tree areas |
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| Summit view of Victoria on the left and Castle and Windsor on the right |
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| Summit picture |
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| Wind swept ridge we took on descent |
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| View of the drainage we took down, this was a little more wind swept of snow |
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| Neat little stick that looked like a snake |
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| "Castle on a Cloud" is a song from the musical Les Miserables and that is what I thought of as we saw the clouds surrounding Castle Peak as we descended |
Track of Hike
Summit Video
Summit Photo Sphere
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