Turtle Mountain Scramble

Ok, technically the scramble up Turtle Mountain is not in Castle, but it’s close enough and worth including as it’s an interesting scramble with great views.

Turtle Mountain is the site of one of Canada’s largest natural disasters. On the night of April 29, 1903, a portion of the mountain measuring 3281ft x 1476ft x 492ft and weighing over 80 million tons collapsed and buried much of the town of Frank, killing nearly 100 people. The mountain, which had resembled the gently curved back of a turtle, was transformed into two summits separated by a jagged and fractured scar where the middle had simply fallen away. While today the mountain is considered to be at risk of another slide and is thus covered with scientific monitoring equipment, it nevertheless is a popular day hike.

After navigating to the trailhead parking area you should easily find the trail, as the start is marked by yellow-painted rocks.

The scramble up Turtle Mountain is initially a very steep hike. The trail is in good shape the entire way to the North summit of Turtle Mountain, and while it is particularly steep in the beginning the grade moderates after about 984ft of ascent. The views from the North Peak offer a great view of the surrounding mountains.

Continuing to the true south summit of Turtle Mountain, however, involves particularly challenging route-finding, a bit of scrambling, and about 328ft of elevation loss. The mountain is fractured on a scale that is difficult to comprehend and enormous boulders and ridges block your view forward. There are large fractures in the rock that would cause a nasty injury if you were to fall into them.

Expect to spend some time probing one route after another trying to find one that has the least amount of exposure, often being blocked by cliffs or crevasses. In the end it ended up taking us nearly an hour to cover that one kilometer. While the wind could make this part a bit unpleasant, it is also amazing to see the geological destruction in the area.

After a lengthy wander around the south summit of Turtle Mountain, start back down, moving through the fracture zone much quicker than the way up. Once through there head back down to the car.