Castle Peak Climbing

This digital Castle Peak climbing guidebook gives you GPS navigation, verified topos, and beta for hundreds of climbs. Explore classics and hidden gems with offline access to maps, directions, and beta videos. Whether it's your first visit or fiftieth, KAYA makes your Castle Peak days smoother, safer, and more dialed.

Castle Peak is one of the biggest and best bouldering areas on The North Shore. High quality erratics and terraced walls seem to go on for miles on a south-west facing hillside above I-80. The approaches go from basically roadside to a 60 minute plus walk to the furthest outskirts. Some people say the boulders are too spread out and not very concentrated. While the clusters may be far apart, once you get to a zone there will be more than your skin can handle in a day. There are hundreds of problems spanning the grade spectrum and featuring many different styles of climbing... Show more

This digital Castle Peak climbing guidebook gives you GPS navigation, verified topos, and beta for hundreds of climbs. Explore classics and hidden gems with offline access to maps, directions, and beta videos. Whether it's your first visit or fiftieth, KAYA makes your Castle Peak days smoother, safer, and more dialed. Castle Peak is one of the biggest and best bouldering areas on The North Shore. High quality erratics and terraced walls seem to go on for miles on a south-west facing hillside above I-80. The approaches go from basically roadside to a 60 minute plus walk to the furthest outskirts. Some people say the boulders are too spread out and not very concentrated. While the clusters may be far apart, once you get to a zone there will be more than your skin can handle in a day. There are hundreds of problems spanning the grade spectrum and featuring many different styles of climbing. Tech slabs, cracks, overhangs, compression, highballs and lowballs. It’s all here and it’s classic on bulletproof rock. As usual fall is the best season here and because of its high elevation it can be awhile until the snow melts. It’s not hard to find shade below the terraces on hot days, but the bugs can be extremely bad in the forested areas during mid summer. Castle Peak utilizes three main parking spots on a dirt road. A passenger car will barely make it to Treasure Cove, the first area, but beyond that a 4WD truck is mandatory. Please note that from the gate where the dirt road starts its only a 1/2 mile to The Treasure Cove Trailhead. So if you don’t want to risk driving your sports car on the dirt, it’s not that much extra walking. The whole area is adjacent to a large private property parcel which lies just to the south of the boulders. Please stay off the private property, the owner does not welcome trespassers. DRIVING: Take I-80 west from Truckee and take the Boreal Ridge exit. Turn right and follow a steep road until it ends at a dirt road with a gate. To approach Treasure Cove/Lower Castle Peak drive up the dirt road for 100 yds and go left. From here reset your odometer, follow the main dirt road for 0.5 miles, take a left on a smaller dirt road, drive for a short ways and park near a meadow area. You will pass a left hand turn a little ways up the main road, don’t take this turn as it leads to the private property. To approach Middle Castle Peak continue past the Treasure Cove parking spot uphill for 0.1 miles and go left. At 0.3 continue straight, at 0.7 turn left just past a steep crux section in the road then continue for 0.1 and park in a small meadow area. To approach The Tsunami area drive for 1.1 miles from Treasure Cove parking area, passing the turn to Middle Castle Peak and go left at the fork. Continue for 0.3 miles and take a faint left onto a short road that ends on a plateau and park here. APPROACH: For walking directions to the separate areas please find detailed hiking beta at the start of each section in this chapter.