Castle & Conundrum

This last weekend mom and I cruised over to Aspen for the day and climbed Castle peak and Conundrum Peak. We had a wonderful time and met some really neat people. The Jeep handled the 4wd road to the trailhead with ease, and we found ourselves camping just below the trailhead before getting an early start the next morning. While we were setting up camp in the failing light a young doe came trotting into the campsite and started eating some of the small plants I had urinated on earlier. I was able to stay really still and she didn't see me even though I was about 4 feet away. Pretty incredible. We started hiking at 6:30 the next morning after giving a ride to three people who didn't want to ruin their rental car, and made it to the summit of Castle by about 9:15. There were a few sections where we had to cross the snow, so I kicked some steps in for mom and then she followed behind me. She was a little worried at first, but it was good to push her comfort level a little bit. Once on the top of Castle, I decided to do the traverse over to Conundrum. I made it across in 20 minutes, and then made it back in 25, with a a round trip time of 45 minutes. I covered about 1.5 miles and +600 feet vertical gain and loss in that time, meaning that I was moving really fast over the class 2+ terrain. We descended from Castle after mom had waited for me, and then glissaded about 500 feet down the snow field to get back to the road. Mom had a blast! It was really fun, and made the descent a lot more interesting. After we got back we went over to Grandma and Grandpa's cabin and hung out for the rest of the day, and then returned on Sunday. It was a really fun weekend. I will post pictures soon.

Tomorrow I am headed out to go skydiving, and the following day I will be meeting up with a few really experienced climbers from the Denver area to do a really difficult ridge traverse in RMNP. I can't wait, and I'll be sure to post a lot of pictures.