PCT / Castle Peak / Basin Peak / Paradise Lake / Warren Lake
Author
Trail stats
- Distance
- 17.06 mi
- Elevation gain
- 4,928 ft
- Technical difficulty
- Difficult
- Elevation loss
- 4,928 ft
- Max elevation
- 8,953 ft
- TrailRank
- 10
- Min elevation
- 7,110 ft
- Trail type
- Loop
- Time
- 11 hours 53 minutes
- Coordinates
- 2590
- Uploaded
- July 7, 2016
- Recorded
- July 2016
near Norden, California (United States)
Viewed 265 times, downloaded 5 times
Itinerary description
PCT / Castle Peak / Basin Peak / Paradise Lake / Warren Lake
Comments (2)
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This was a very interesting hike.. as we were thinking we could do this in 8-9 hours and it could had happened if things fell our way.
We were doing pretty good until we hit the snow patch on the west side of Castle Peak.. and after that it was clear sailing to Basin Peak.. no problems there.
When we reached the intersection for the turn to Paradise Lake, we blew by it by about 1/3 mile and had to back track..
The route that is marked on some maps as the Warren Lake loop that included Paradise Lake.. is not there.. If it was there.. forget about it..
We lost nearly two hours just trying to make it down to Paradise Lake.. and another hour going down to Warren Lake.
Make sure you wear long pants.. my legs got scratched up pretty good.. and the mosquitoes were swarming all over. There were so many, they got behind my eye glasses and I killed a couple with my eye lids. My ears are still itching two days later.
Beautiful hike.. but for the light hardy.. there is too much climbing, too many stream crossing this time of the year, and too many snow patches to easily lose a trail.
Another time of the year.. this would be a good 8-10 hour hike with the right mix of group..
The group we had are strong hikers.. Two weeks earlier we did 26.8 miles with roughly 5,000 ft elevation change in 11 hours.. so the trail conditions on this hike really took a toll on the total time.
Love this hike. I've posted the PCT/Castle/Basin portion recently, http://www.wikiloc.com/wikiloc/view.do?id=7404534, but haven't done the descents from Basin to Paradise and Paradise to Warren for many years, before GPS. There were no real trails even then, just routes marked sometimes with untrustworthy ducks. So route-finding is a challenge even without snow!