"I hiked Castle and Conundrum via the standard route, starting at a campsite very low on the road. The weather was perfect all morning with zero wind. After Conundrum, I decided to re-summit Castle instead of taking the saddle descent." — WaxDr • Aug 19, 2017

" I climbed Castle Peak & Conundrum Peak with my dear friend Aaron Charles Pacheco. We did not do the standard route, but instead decided to ascend the Northeast Ridge in it's entirety from much lower than the standard route normally would. If you stay on the left side of the ridge it is a steep class 2, but we decided to do the right side of the ridge into some very unnecessary and very enjoyable class 3,4,& 5. This climb had some of the loosest rock I have ever dealt with. We had plenty of close calls. There was constant rock fall from above. Every hold you tried to grab came loose. On our decent we decided to go down from the saddle between the two peaks and into the basin. This was another decision that put us in very dangerious territory. There was still a lot of snow, so to avoid it we ended up traveling along some very narrow ledges with huge exposure. Every time the wind would blow rocks would start falling all around us and the sound it made was like a thousand animals in a stampede.There were moments where I would step on a rock and it would fall. I would quickly jump to the next rock and it would also fall. It felt like being in video game or a movie. There was one moment..." — IanWright • Jul 10, 2016

"The traverse from Castle was uneventful and enjoyable. Met a nice man from Alabama at the summit who has been coming to CO a week a year for the past 7 years to work on the list. We descended together into the basin, which I thought was the hardest part of the day by far. I'm usually good on loose rock, but this had a 'walking on ball bearings on a tile floor' feel to it, and I needed to downclimb some cliff bands to get around a choke point in the chute before the terrain became more forgiving. I actually was going to do this hike two years ago, and I'm glad the younger me didn't give it a try, as I don't think the descent would have gone well." — Christopher • Jul 23, 2013