Castle Peak, Wrangell Mountains. Castle Peak is very deserving of its name, for it is a giant monolith whose rock walls rise almost straight up 3500 feet from the glacier below its southern and eastern exposures and a good 2000 feet on the west. Its summit is glacier-capped and ¾ of a mile long. Its northern side is guarded by a glacier clear to the summit. In August, 1973 John Pinamont, Scott Mueller, Paul Canicelli, Art Ward and I stood below this north side on the Kuskulana Glacier after a three-day walk. The series of ice blocks and séracs looked impossible to ascend. So we settled on P 9820, which rises only 900 feet from the pass between it and Mount Blackburn. We all got to within 100 feet of the summit, but only Pinamont and I had time to do the final pitch before bad weather forced us back. In 1977 with the aid of Art Ward’s supercub, we landed at 2350 feet on a gravel bar. We followed up Mill Creek for about three miles and took the west fork for another two miles to another fork, this time to the east. We ascended this to what should be Mill Glacier, since it is the largest of the glaciers draining into Mill Creek. From camp on the glacier we looked up a steep ice gully that rose 1200 feet to the top of the ridge which connects the west ridge of Castle Peak to P 9847. On the morning of June 16 we climbed the gully early hoping the snow would not be soft and dodging falling rocks. The distance to the summit ridge was a series of snow bridges and ice blocks and just before the summit ridge we had to climb a steep slope in deep snow. Most of the summit ridge was a long slog, but the high point was a spectacular, corniced knife-edge. The gully on the descent was a nasty waterfall of ice and slush down which huge boulders sometimes plunged.

Larry Swanson, Mountaineering Club of Alaska