Castle Peak - The southeast ridge is way more of an adventure than expected

A friend recently told me about Frog Lake near Castle Peak and how beautiful it is. After doing some www-research about the lake, I found out that it (and it's surroundings) is still privately owned by a family, but will be purchased by Truckee Donner Land Trust and made publicly available in 2020. To get a glimpse of this gem, I planned a hike to Frog Lake Cliff (west of Frog Lake on P. 8653, east of Castle Peak). Looking at some maps (in particular OpenStreetMap and the MapBuilder Topo layer of CalTopo) a path is shown from P. 8653 to Castle Peak along the east ridge (direction southeast close to the high point). So my plan was to hike to Frog Lake Cliff from the Boreal exit on I-80, from there follow the ridge to Castle Peak and hike back in a loop via the chute south of the peak down to the Castle Valley and eventually back to the starting point.

I knew that even the easiest route to climb the highest Castle Peak pinnacle would be challenging for my dog, but thought it would also be a good experiment to find out for future scrambles, what he can and can not do if it comes technical rock climbing.

The parking spaces on the north side of the Exit Castle Peak/Boreal Ridge on I-80 are already quite filled up when I arrive shortly after 8 am. I hike along the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) for almost a mile and then turn right onto the Donner Lake Rim Trail which I follow for about 1.5 miles. Then I take a left up the hill and follow the Warren Lake Trail to the little saddle east of P. 8653, visit the nice view point "Frog Lake Cliff", take a short break and enjoy the beautiful view and wonderful weather.

I then walk towards Castle Peak pretty much exactly on the connecting ridge, at the beginning along a clear and easy path. Where the ridge turns northwest (about 1/3 of a mile southeast linear distance from the highpoint), the path traces get sparse and following the ridge becomes rather difficult pretty soon. I first try my luck somewhat southwest of the ridge but soon get stuck in front of a vertical drop. I then go back and try on the other side of the ridge where I find some ledges and relatively easy scrambles which take me a little further. Unfortunately the rock on this side of the ridge is very brittle and holds have to be carefully checked before putting some weight on it. Both me and the dog send quite a few rocks down the steep north side and let the adrenaline level rise a bit. Some scrambling and walking along exposed ledges lead around a corner to the south side again and another ledge would continue here, at least for about another 20 yards as far as I can see. However, this very narrow ledge is now even more exposed and in addition has some gaps. "Luckily" the dog refuses to go any further and makes me turn around, carefully retracing the route in the very unpleasant terrain.

Since there is no obvious way on the ridge, I decide to bypass it on the south side and even that turns out not to be simple. I find a chute which doesn't end in a huge drop, but allows me to carefully climb down to an altitude of about 8600 ft and traverse to the chute south of the highpoint (which I used for my descents from the peak twice already in winter and spring: 1 and 2). I am curious if I would find a way along the southeast ridge coming from the top. After reaching the ridge, I scramble down to check out if something obvious is there, which I maybe didn't see coming from the other side. However, I end up at a drop of about 100 ft where I don't see any obvious possibility for me to climb down. I also don't recognize the end of my trial from below. However, according to my gps track I am only about 50 yards away from the dead end on the other side... oh well maybe I'll give it another try some day.
What is clear to me though, is that the trail indicated on some topo maps is definitely not something for the faint-hearted, but would probably involve some serious, exposed and brittle class III (maybe even IV) climbing.

After giving up on the southeast ridge I want to at least visit the highpoint of Castle Peak. For that I hike up to the base of the easternmost pinnacle and from there scramble up (class III / T5-/II with very solid holds) on the south side to the very top. As expected, this final climb to the highpoint is a tad too difficult for the dog and he has to "wine and cry" at the base and wait for my return.

The hike back to the car then is straight down the south side, following the small drainage (depending on brush sometimes left sometimes right of the small (mostly dry) creek bed there) to the PCT and finally back to the starting point.