Castle Crag powder laps

Castle Cragging at its finest.

I wrapped up a fabulous weekend of powder skiing by rallying at 5:30 for Castle Crag.  The approach up Mill creek is kind of a mind numbing crusher, but I got it done in just over 3 hours.  Snow coverage right now in Mill is as good as I have ever seen it, and I stopped many times to scope new-to-my-brain North facing ski lines that are typically too devoid of snow to merit skiing.  I need to go back soon with slightly better stability and start checking them off the list! From the base of the crag, I got to work on the 3,300 foot climb to the summit.  With a reactive buried weak layer 40 cm down, I took the most conservative route on the climb.  Even though it was too cloudy to see anything, it was pretty cool to stand on the craggy summit of Castle crag in winter again.  And the ski run was incredible, with nice boot top powder top to bottom, and adequate coverage to have good skiing all the way to the creek.

Below the summit ridge and in the good powder.

Good powder near the bottom third of the run.

After a celebratory lunch break, I jammed back up my skin track to the lower summit ridge, and nosed my way into the next gully system down canyon.  The ski run ended up being much better than expected.  After negotiating the exposed headwall, I was treated to over a thousand vertical feet of smooth open gully skiing with more boot top powder. To my delight, the lower few hundred feet of the gully served up super fun half pipe style skiing reminiscent of the Pinball Wizard gully in Bass creek.

The exit was long.  Fortunately, I kind of like long ski walks out of the Bitterroot alone.  I kicker skinned my way out in a little over two hours.  7,000 vertical feet, done in 10 hours car to car.

Climbing for more.

Looking down the second gully.

Lower in the gully.

Half pipe skiing at the bottom of the gully.

I think that Castle crag is a little too far up canyon to be a classic, but any of the three South facing runs are worthy ski lines from one of the most distinctive peaks in the Bitterroot range.