For some sick and twisted reason I have had the idea of doing Castle Towers as a day trip for awhile now but never bothered to actually follow through with it. Things finally changed when the weather window was bomb proof, time off was approved, and Burndug (Doug) also wanted to knock this sucker off.

Alarm goes off at 3:00am - leave Tsawwassen, meet Doug at the church at 4:00am, drive the heavily potholed road to the Cheakamus trail head and start hiking in the dark at 6:00am.

No mud wasps on the trail, and we made good time upto the campground which was full of tents and what looked to be a chilly night.


We then hung a Larry off the main trail taking the obvious direct line of dry creek beds, low creeks,goat paths, and finally a moraine until we reached the toe of Helm glacier. Here we had abit of break and I put on my usual setup of crampons overtop of light hikers and Doug just threw on a pair of micro-spikes. Bare ice for half of the glacier but the crevasses were easy enough to navigate over top of. The upper section was snow covered and at the top we got our first view of Castle Towers.


We dropped way down into Gentian Pass using a steep creek bed, which worked well and at the bottom filled up the water bottles, ditched any dead weight and started up again. Typical uphill slog of many rolling bumps, but the real kick in the nuts is when you reach Polemonium Ridge and realize you have to drop down again. I knew this was coming from reading other reports but still once you get there and see it first hand, you can't help but drop a few F-Bombs. Once that was out of the way it was one giant boulder hop back up to the West Summit where you get a glimpse of the actual summit. Where the "fun" part starts.


We had a look at the way SimonC dropped into the notch( Right side) and didn't like the exposure so we had a look and chose the lesser of two evils and used the loose exposed ramp/crack( Left Side) where I purposely kicked down a giant flake which in turn moved a pickup sized rock, but sadly didn't release it. Action shots of Doug in the jing heap section below the West Summit, where now is no time to slip or you aren't coming home.


Once in the notch it was an easy jaunt up then across the ledge and then up to the top for killer views 8hrs after we started. One guy wrote in the register he did it from his car in 4hrs!?!?! Is that even possible?


We left the top at 2:30pm and made the long slog back into Gentian Pass which was rather brutal, after that loaded up on water again, found our overdrive and made quick work of the 900ft back upto the top of Helm Glacier. The lighting was good this time of day, Doug made a call home and we started down the glacier.


We made it all the way to the campground without headlamps, asked a few people what was for dinner and they said they just ate elk cooked in red wine which sounded better than cliff bars and bread. Put on our headlamps, passed by a group of 4 unprepared hikers sharing 2 dinky flashlights with no backpacks. Zombie mode kicked in, kept getting pissed off because it was so flat, too many rocks, too many roots, after the bridge it was back uphill to the car kinda got pissed off at that too. But we made it back to the car 15.5 hrs after we started. BOOOM! glad to have it done! I don't know the stats but some say it's over 40km and around 3000m elevation gain? anyways my longest and biggest day ever. I think Doug's Devils Tongue trip was his longest. We didn't even want to drink the beer at the end of the day or take a car shot. McDicks in Squamish started our day and then ended the day.

Nice work! Long day, with a lot of ups and downs.

You know you've had your ass kicked when you don't even drink the beer at the car[B)]
For some even sicker reason I still want to go back sometime to bag the true summit this time and camp on Polemonium again. You guys did it reasonably fast too- that guy who says he did it in 4 hours is full of it, no fackin way that'd hold up in court[]

Well done. When I was on Helm peak this spring I took a good look at Castle Towers and it still looked a long way away. I've been wondering if I have the juice to do it in a day ...Â*

August next summer...I shall repeat this effort. Nicely done gentlemen!

This baby was my longest trip by distance and about the same for cumulative elevation gain.

Kicked the crap out of me......My gimped feet are by far the sorest part of the anatomy today.

Some things you only do once in life and Castle Towers is one of them. Whoever named those Towers should have named them "Jing Heap Towers." ----Full on choss pile.

The real bonus was some uber high quality views.

Al scoping out our route up Castle Towers

Down climbing the only good rock on the route

Not a bad view

Al wandering up the rubble field from hell

The last smile of the day...Summit shot

Al climbing up the uber-sketchy heap of crap to the West Summit

Money shot of Helm Glacier

Al at the bottom of Helm Glacier


We were the third group to summit "The Heap" this year and there was a whole three parties that summitted last year....Hmmmm...I wonder why so few????

oh.... admittedly I might have a very short memory but nonetheless this is no doubt the most exciting & best report of the year!! Thank you for posting this. I could imagine all what was taking place and got goosebumps.

awesome. Overnighters suck sometimes, it's worth doing some trips in a day.

http://infirmofpurpose.wordpress.com...ntain-jogging/

Here is the link to Nicks blog who ran it in 6:54 car to car. Believe it.

Sick is all I can say! In a good way.

One tip-top shape Dude.

Impressive!
I stand corrected

Edit: Nick's blog is well written and well worth reading

A fine day indeed, especially with a little less light in the day than earlier in the fall.

Surprised at the amount of frost in that photo of the campsite. We were at Ring and it was nothing like that...this morning was positively warm, as in not even below freezing...

Super effort, awesome result. Nice to get that long one in and get those views.

Lots of beautiful pictures, one especially makes that castle tower look like it is made of matrix of crystal shaped rock.


K

Very Impressive trip!

I think the Helm Glacier route is the way to go when it is exposed ice. How was it with sneakers on?

The Helm Glacier is always the way to go. It's soon to be renamed the Helm Hockey Rink due to the flatness. Especially if Si takes his Zamboni up there.