Hike Castle Peaks Mojave National Preserve, CA

Mar 19, 2022 — My friend Chris flew out from CA to adventure with me in the desert for 9 days. Friends would join and leave us sporadically along the trip, but we would be the core duo stuck together in my car. I haven't spent this much time with another person who isn't my boyfriend in a very long time, but if Chris wasn't already a close friend, I now surely consider him so. I couldn't have asked for a better adventure companion as we booped around the desert playing on dangerous towers and slot canyons. We carefully planned our trip, but extreme heat forced us to change pretty much everything, though we were both flexible and the result was one of the best trips to date. And of course, thanks for bringing your trad gear and getting me up stuff I never could have done otherwise, Chris. More fun ahead! Anyway, enough gushing.

The Castle Peaks are a distinctive set of towers in the Mojave National Preserve. They're visible from Mountain Pass along the I-15, though their jagged silhouette isn't known by most who drive the interstate. Despite only being an hour from Las Vegas, I've been unable to get them because they both host loose rock and/or Class 5 climbing. A few years ago I hiked the more tame peaks within Castle Mountains National Monument just to the east. While those peaks share a name with these, they are quite different in character. It seems that most people approach the Castle Peaks from the south, but the additional 15 miles of driving each way didn't seem worth it to us. Instead we chose to hike in from the east, which would add only a couple of extra hiking miles. Both routes use the same initial drive-in, which started by heading south off Joshua Tree Highway here (35.50006, -115.03615). At this junction (35.39757, -115.08544), we turned right onto a much less good road, though passable by Crossovers vehicles. I don't know what the road is like for the other route. Our road weaves up and down hills and passes some old rancher settlements. We parked at a little side-road with mining detritus shortly before the wilderness boundary (located here 35.36989, -115.11933) because the road got quite bad past here.

From our parking spot, we hiked the remainder of the legal road to the wilderness boundary, then continued along the still very much intact road on foot as it continued pretty directly to the west, slowly ascending to the base of the Castle Peaks. When the road started to bend north, we left it and headed through a series of washes and up slopes to reach the southeastern base of Castle Peaks North (aka North Castle Butte). There's no one right way to get here. It's clear where to go since the peaks are visible ahead, but you may have more or fewer arroyos to hike in and out of, depending on your route-finding.

Now at the southwestern side of Castle Peaks North, we wrapped up the steep slope with some light side-hilling, barely even Class 2, until the complex-looking summit area came into view. Class 2 led us to the base of the crux. First, a short Class 2+ move led over a minor cliff band and up a short ramp to get to the cux. This was the first of many times I was happy Chris was here. If the rock were solid, this would be a very fun scramble, but it sure wasn't. The large holds were spoiled by the reality they could pull out at any point. Chris cautiously made his way up the crux (Class 4), which lasted about 15-20 feet. While not exposed, a 15-20 foot fall is still enough to hurt. He dropped me some webbing in case I needed it. I was happy to have it later on the descent, but only needed it for mental stability on the way up. Knowing it was there was enough for me. The moves included at least one high foot, and a bit of poking around to locate the most solid options available. Meh, it could have been fun if the rock wasn't so unpredictable. Past the crux, we kept to the right and ascended a short slope that led to some fun Class 3 up a ramp with much more solid holds. From here we were on the summit ridge, a short bit of Class 2 to gain the high point.

We descended from Castle Peaks North and down the slope to the peak's saddle with Castle Peaks Middle (aka Dove Benchmark), our next peak. We expected some technical climbing on this one from reading a few trip reports. The peak's north and eastern faces are sheer cliffs, so we wrapped around the peak's northern side beneath the cliffs to get to an obvious grassy gully on its south side. From here, fun Class 2/3 took us along the ridgeline and up to the summit block. At first we thought the southern side was the route, but realized we had to drop to the right beneath the summit block cliff and wrap around on the right to get there. The crux became quickly apparent, a flared chimney that required a 20 foot climb. We geared up, Chris scoping the crack in the center of the chimney. He started up, placing a few pieces of protection as he went. The rock quality was not good, but we both felt it wasn't as bad as previous climbers had reported. Once above the pitch, Chris belayed me up. The first half can be stemmed, but soon the right side of the chimney becomes too loose and I found myself only using it for a foothold here and there. There were a few important holds that I hesitated to use because they looked like large pebbles ready to pop out. We were both happy we would be able to rappel on the descent, since a downclimb would be pretty scary.

Above the crux, the scramble eased up a bit. A couple of short Class 2/3 moves took us to up two options. Keeping right led to a fun Class 3/4 chimney, where staying left followed a slanted ledge and then ascended a Class 2 ramp. Both led to the summit.

Although there are other named peaks in the area (Blade Peak, Castle Peaks South), these are the only ranked summits and I was content to just get these. Chris pondered for a long time about attempting Blade Peak, a scary-looking narrow fin of horrifying loose-looking quality. I was secretly extremely happy he didn't want to go for it, but would have belayed him if he was really into it. Instead, we enjoyed the view of this impressive feature for a bit and then backtracked to the base of Castle Peaks North. From here we side-hilled around the southern side of the peak until an animal trail led us back to our ascent route.