Elizabeth and I set out to hike Castle Peak, Basin Peak, and Andesite Peak today. Our plan was to hike from the Donner Summit trailhead of the Pacific Crest Trail to Castle Pass, then climb Castle Peak and traverse to Basin Peak. From Basin Peak, we’d loop along the Pacific Crest Trail back to the pass, then tag Andesite Peak before hiking back to the car.
We left home at 7 and started hiking at 9:40 under an overcast sky. The clouds were a novelty for us, since almost all of our Sierra Nevada hikes this summer have been under a blazing sun. Cool temperatures and a healthy breeze even made me put on my fleece jacket.
We hiked through a secondary forest of lodgepole pine, western white pine, mountain hemlock, and red and white fir. It was pleasant enough, but the setting was marred by the roar of nearby Interstate 80. The Pacific Crest Trail meandered around the interstate for a frustratingly long time, but it did provide one amusement: the trail crossed the road through a pair of underground tunnels that were a great place to play with our echoes.
We left the road’s vicinity through a classic Sierra landscape of pine woodlands strewn with granite boulders. By then, the clouds had broken up and brought back some classic Sierra sunshine.
Approaching Castle Pass, we walked through a forest of red fir and white pine, almost entirely secondary. A few of the trees, perhaps because of their curved trunks, had been spared by the loggers, and we found some spectacular old specimens of white pine and red fir.
From Castle Pass, Elizabeth and I turned east toward Castle Peak. The trail was steep and the rocks and sand underfoot were slippery. But plenty of switchbacks let us climb without any problems. We passed two hikers descending from the peak and we saw plenty more during the day. This is a popular peak.
I loved the sparse, wind-swept trees and tawny grass we walked through on the way up. The groves were surprisingly diverse, including red fir, mountain hemlock, Jeffrey pine, and lodgepole pine. Among the grass were pinemat manzanita, sagebrush, and some buckwheat. Woolly mule’s ears, turned yellow by now, rustled in the wind.
The morning weather forecast predicted strong winds on the peaks and ridges around Lake Tahoe, with gusts up to 50 miles per hour. And as we approached the summit ridge, we were feeling them. We held on to our hats. Elizabeth’s hair whipped her face and my backpack straps beat my chest. Some gusts even threatened our balance, but they didn’t keep us from the summit.
Castle Peak has three turrets of volcanic rock on top. The first one you reach, the west turret, is a walk-up that seems to satisfy most visitors. But the third, the east turret, is the true high point, and that’s where we headed, bypassing the other turrets on a trail below their south side.
We scrambled up a crack to the east turret’s base, from where we could see the route to the top. The rocks around us settled the wind down to a persistent breeze. Above us was a 30-foot climb up nearly vertical rock. We’d never climbed anything like this unroped before. At least it looked solid with lots of holds.
Elizabeth tried the climb first. Mindful that she’d have to downclimb it, she went up some 6 feet, then scrambled down. She faced away from the rock to descend, but I encouraged her to try climbing face-in since it would be essential to get down the steeper parts. She didn’t want to hear about it, though, and came down just the way she wanted.
I went next. The turret certainly was steep. I could only fit my toes on the rocks. I searched for handholds. I tried to keep my weight over my feet. Once I’d gotten about as far as Elizabeth had, I slowly started making my way down. I tried to face in, but like Elizabeth, I turned around near the bottom; she’d been right after all.
She went up again—this time about 10 feet—then I went up again. The first time wasn’t too bad, so now I wanted to see how high I could go before I got scared. I climbed up, putting more and more air under my heels. I made a few moves that felt tricky, particularly in my trail runners, and started worrying about reversing them on the way down. With 10 more feet of near-vertical rock above me and Elizabeth 20 feet below me, I decided I’d had enough and climbed down, slowly unwinding the path I’d taken up.
Back on the ground, I shook off my stress and excitement. The summit would have to wait for another day—the climb was still too rich for my taste. Elizabeth went up one last time, making it about halfway. Then I went up once more, but just tried out different hand and foot holds and practiced moving up and down the rock. I still had to wrap my head around the experience of climbing in sneakers and with severe consequences.
Satisfied with our scrambling, we hiked back to the west turret and enjoyed the view one last time. We waved to a group of hikers resting on top, then started down to the trail to Basin Peak.
Right then, my left knee started hurting. I’d tweaked it with some overzealous sprinting during my morning run on Wednesday and now it was acting up. Overuse injuries are easy to get and hard to lose, I knew, and I wanted to avoid one. Maybe it was time to curtail the day’s plan. Anyway, the wind was still blasting us and we were starting to get sick of it.
As tempting as the ridge hike to Basin Peak was, we returned to Castle Pass. From there, we followed a trail west to Andesite Peak, turned left at the intersection with the Hole in the Ground trail, then hiked cross country to the peak.
I traversed south of the summit, then climbed to the top over a mess of crumbling rocks. Elizabeth chose a better route, climbing over red rocks to the saddle east of the summit. In hindsight, we probably should have just gone straight up from the trail.
The best view from Andesite Peak was of Castle Peak. We enjoyed it for a minute, then returned to the pass. Again I was pleasantly surprised by the diversity of the scraggly trees on the ridge—western white pine, lodgepole pine, red fir, and mountain hemlock. A flock of mountain bluebirds flew through the weathered conifers and the drab grass, looking like sapphire jewels.
The hike back was uneventful. I welcomed this, since knee pain was an event I hoped to avoid. I felt fresh at the end of the hike and was surprised by the time: 6:10. We’d been out for over 8 hours. Another fine day in the mountains, although we’d have to hike the Castle–Basin loop another day.
On the drive home we ate at Ikeda’s in Auburn for dinner, just as we had after our hike to Tinker Knob a few weeks ago.
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