In my stock 4 wheel drive 4Runner we made it about 2.8 miles down Pearl Pass Road to 11,100ft (just over the bridge) as the sun was going down. We had a pretty epic ledge to sit on for dinner and a view. 

From our parking spot at 11,100ft we started up towards Castle Peak at 5:30am the next morning. After a single switchback we reached the junction with Montezuma Basin Road. There’s a pretty large area at the junction to park and camp and my 4Runner would have been fine getting to this point.

Brian and I continued hiking up Montezuma Basin Road as the sun rose and saw the road start to deteriorate even more with a significant drop off to the left. The end of Montezuma Basin Road reaches 12,800ft and there were a couple cars up here with some solid drivers, large off-roading tires, and extra lift. I stupidly forgot my sunglasses and Chad at the parking lot was kind enough to lend me some for the day. Shoutout to Chad. 

Brian and I continued over the boulder field before reaching the trail that ascends to the ridgeline. At this point we were moving alongside several other hikers and this part was pretty steep. The ridgeline up to Castle is probably the hardest route finding and climbing of the day. There’s a bit of exposure but nothing too bad. Before we knew it we were on top of Castle Peak (14,278 ft) three hours later at 8:30am looking at the beautiful Elk Range.

The ridgeline between the two peaks isn’t nearly as bad as it looks and the only significant scrambling is near the summits. As I was told about the Elk Range there is a lot of loose, crumbling rock that appears to be solid so checking the hand and foot holds was really important. 

The standard route takes you back up and over Castle to safely descend the same route you came up. 14ers.com has some great pics and resources on this. There were a couple people butt sliding down the steep, loose gulley from the ridgeline to shave some time off but it looks pretty sketch.

The length of this hike really depends on how high up the road you can make it but with our start we clocked in at 3,900ft, 7.4 miles, and 7 hours (with a couple solid breaks).