Castle Rock



In the last few weeks here at McMurdo the temperatures have continued to go up, and therefore so have the outdoor activities around town, hikes, etc.  So Sunday morning we decided we were going to head out to Castle Rock, which is pretty much the only hike in the area that I hadn’t attempted since I have been here.  The hike is a total of 7 miles (round trip), and in order to attempt it, you have to check out a radio with the fire department and schedule a departure and return time before you can leave town.  If for any reason you are not going to meet your return time, you are required to radio ahead and update the firehouse, otherwise, if you are more than two minutes late, the search and rescue team is called into action and it becomes a pretty big deal.

Approaching Castle Rock

So anyways, we started out at about 10:00am.  The trail is marked the entire way by a line of flags that head directly to the base of castle rock.  The hike is deceiving in that you can see Castle Rock itself almost from the time you start, but no matter how long you walk, it never seems to get any closer.  The first quarter mile of the trail took the longest because it was covered in melting snow and ice, so we found ourselves constantly stepping in large puddles of slush, but after we got through that first section it went relatively fast.  It was a bit cloudy on Sunday, but the weather was really nice and was probably in the high 30’s or low 40’s.  Along the way to Castle Rock there are two warming huts that are set up, just incase you are out there and you get stuck in a storm, you can use these huts for shelter.  So after a little over an hour of walking we finally reached the base of Castle Rock.  Castle Rock itself is pretty cool landmark to see, it’s a huge cliff formation that sits towards the base of Mt Erebus.  We hung out at the bottom for a little while before heading around to the other side to meet up with the trail that takes you to the top of the rock. As we continued to get higher, the trail continued to get steeper and steeper until we were almost vertical, at which point there were ropes that had been anchored into the side of the rock that we used to help pull ourselves up.  Along the way to the summit, there were some amazing views in every direction.  From this point it only took us about a half hour to get to the top of the cliff itself, and on top the views just continued to get better.  So after hanging out on top for about an hour or so, we decided to head back down.

All in all I would have to say that Castle Rock is by far the best hike in the area, and the fact that we only saw two other people the entire day made it even better.  We are already talking about going up again in a week or two, and possibly even camping, so I guess we’ll see how that goes.