HOME
CASTLETON TOWER PRESERVATION INITIATIVE
Copyright 2002 by Greg Child
In the Spring of 1999, a few weeks after I moved to the not-quite-a-town of Castle Valley, a forest of For Sale signs sprouted up along a 60-acre strip of desert wedged between the Lasal Mountain Loop Road and the cliffs of Parriott Mesa. Like most folks around here and in nearby Moab, I assumed that this archetypal bit of Utah-arid, and the land beyond it toward the sentinel of Castleton Tower two miles up the valley, was some form of nature preserve. Indeed, the valley and its dramatic geology are as beautiful as any part of nearby Canyonlands or Arches National Parks.
Sunset is the best time to appreciate the artwork that time has created in Castle Valley. At dusk the fortress walls of Parriott Mesa, a 1.5-mile sandstone island encircled by 300-foot tall cliffs, and the 400-foot prism of Castleton, glow magenta-red, and long shadows on the talus cones beneath them reveal the etchings of wind and rain. Dusk is also when the land shrugs off the heat of day, when swallows dive off the cliffs, and when deer, coyote, and the seldom seen bobcat emerge from arroyos.
Stunning country, yes, and one of a handful of areas where stark desert collides abruptly with timbered and often snow-capped peaks, but not protected. The 60 acres for sale had belonged to a Utah state agency called School and Institutional Trust Lands Administratior, or SITLA for short. The land had been quietly auctioned and the developer whod bought it was reselling it for a tidy profit. More alarming, I learned that SITLA also owned 221 acres right below Castleton Tower, and that land was also slated for auction. That parcel, it was said, had already been plotted out for an exclusive community of 15 high-end homes.
Castleton Towers striking symmetry and rich climbing history make it an icon of American climbing. It is to the desert southwest what Everest is to Himalayan alpinism. Turning the tranquil habitat beneath Castleton and Parriot Mesa into small suburbs with seemed a benefit for a handful and a loss for most. At Castleton, climbers stood to lose more than anyone, for while Castleton and the adjacent formations of the Rectory and the Priest lay safely on BLM land, the trails and campsites that climbers and hikers use to access them lay on the soon-to-be-sold land. It seemed unlikely that prospective homeowners would let anyone walk through their backyards to get to the towers. Even if walk-in access could be saved, staring down at adobe casitas, golf-course green lawns, and bitumen streams in place of red rock and juniper would be tragic and depressing.
Mysteriously, shortly after the real estate signs appeared under Parriott Mesa, they disappeared. A quick sale, I assumed, and I anticipated the arrival of bulldozers and builders. I was wrong. This being Ed Abbey country (Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell, Abbey had once proclaimed), some locals had indulged in a bit of nocturnal monkey-wrenching by relocating the signs to Arches National Park and planting them beneath a much-photographed span called The North Window. When a German tourist saw the signs early next morning he marched into the visitors center and told perplexed rangers that he wanted to buy the arch. Well, who wouldnt?
Soon after, though, the signs reappeared under Parriott Mesa, but by then -- May 1999 -- a few Castle Valley residents had galvanized themselves into an organization called the Castle Rock Collaboration (CRC), and they had allied themselves with Utah Open Lands (UOL), a non-profit land trust specializing in property acquisitions for preservation and recreation. The two groups set a lofty goal: raise nearly a million dollars to purchase and preserve all 281 acres under Parriott Mesa and Castleton Tower.
Initially, many folks -- developers, state officials, even some town residents and climbers -- called the preservation initiative the dream of a bunch of anti-development, tree-hugging Luddites, and they gave it little hope of raising the money or changing the course of development. Some argued that development was positive for sleepy Castle Valley, as it would create jobs and raise property values. The conservationists, however, posed a simple question: Is it fundamentally right, or fundamentally wrong, to preserve the unique habitat surrounding one of Americas scenic marvels, and its greatest climbing icon?
Huntley Ingalls believes he was the first climber to lay eyes on Castleton Tower (as well as on the Titan in the nearby Fisher Towers, and North Six Shooter Peak in Indian Creek), in 1956 while working as an astrophysicist with the USGS, doing a gravity survey of the Colorado Plateau.
I dreamed of climbing them but they were beyond my reach at that time, he recalled of the spires. When he moved to Boulder in 1959 he showed his slides of Castleton and other towers to local climbers. While the formations impressed everyone, he said, my attempts to interest climbers in this venture met with little interest. In those days the desert around Moab felt infinitely more remote than it does today. The area was regarded as a baking wasteland, the haunt of uranium prospectors, retired outlaws and reclusive ranchers. Moreover, around 1960 the top grade being climbed was about 5.9, and the idea of banging in pitons and aid climbing up desert formations as formidably steep and potentially crumbling as Castleton was daunting.
Then Ingalls met Layton Kor, a climber years ahead of his time, a man who Ingalls described as having tremendous ability, drive, and love of new frontiers. The lanky Kor was a bricklayer by trade, which gave him impressively strong hands and forearms, very useful for climbing. But a debilitating bout of San Joaquin Valley fever, a lung fungus, hospitalized him in 1960. When doctors told him he could be a lifetime invalid, Kor checked into an alternative health clinic in Texas. After a month there he returned to Boulder weighing a gaunt 110 pounds, probably due to a diet mainly of lettuce and carrots. Yet his lungs breathed free, and he returned to climbing with a fierce strength-to-weight ratio, and a zest for cramming into his life as many new routes as he could; indeed, that enthusiasm would make Kor a legend in American climbing. The first ascent of Castleton began taking shape in 1961 when Kor casually suggested to Ingalls, Lets look at that tower you keep talking about.
Getting to Castle Valley was a minor expedition in itself back then, as only a crude dirt road led the 17 miles from Moab along the Colorado River, and the road over the Martian-like eroded landscape of the Red Hills into Castle Valley was even rougher. On the morning of September 14, 1961, Kor and Ingalls stared up at Castletons South Face, onto a system of conspicuous corners characterized by curious licks of bone-white rock that appeared to be bonded to the Wingate sandstone. Choosing this as the logical route, they set out.
With no trail up the hill, the heavily laden pair scrabbled up a talus cone of granular Chinle shale that slid under their feet like ball bearings. Sketcherite, some modern desert wits call the accursed stuff. Crampons would work better on it than trail shoes.
Kor led two pitches that first day, the initial one a chimney, the second a steep crack that he aided by stacking angle pitons back-to-back. Fixing their ropes, the pair rappelled and bivouacked under the tower at dusk.
The next morning, September 15, they prussiked up their ropes and Kor, ever the leader, tackled the crux, a dihedral plastered with a crystalline coating resembling dripping candle wax. Unique to the Castleton area and formed when ancient mineral springs bubbled through the earth, these are deposits of calcite and aragonite. Kor was delighted to find that the strange stuff was solid, and he thrashed up on aid before shimmying into an offwidth for a burst of free climbing. When the corner-crack pinched down and squeezed him out he drilled two bolts for aid. On the second and third ascents, by Harvey T. Carter and Clev McCarty in 1962, and by Yosemite pioneers Chuck Pratt and Steve Roper in 1963, all Kors aid moves were free climbed. Today, the route goes at a stout, traditional 5.9.
A fourth and final pitch delivered Kor and Ingalls onto the spacious summit, 6,656 feet above sea level. From the top they stared south into a valley bounded by the pink cliffs of Porcupine Rim on one side, and an archipelago of red mesas on the other. This was Castle Valley, and it was green with a blanket of alfalfa, as back then there was but a single farm working the land; the town of Castle Valley didnt exist until 1974 when the Carlsberg Development Company bought the McCormick farm and plotted out a rural subdivision of 448 five acre lots. Lots sold for as low as $4,990 in those days; today they fetch $60,000. The communitys hippy-town genesis is evidenced by ferro-concrete domes and other alternative structures that look like they fell off the back of a truck, and which intersperse more modern bungalows. Even now, Castle Valleys population is small, just a couple of hundred full timers made up of Moab business owners, LDS families, writers, artists, farmers, retired fun-hogs and broken down climbers. Bo order of the town covenants, there are no payphones and no services.
Looking north from the summit, Kor and Ingalls stared onto the varnished prow of The Rectory, rising a few hundred yards away. Two miles further on, at the end of the Professor Valley, the Colorado River snaked its way toward Moab. On the west horizon, pinpricks of daylight peered through natural arches. To the southeast stood the volcanic pyramids of the Lasal Mountains. Historic country, all of it. Anasazi and Ute Indians had lived hereabouts, while in the 1700s and 1800s the Spanish Trail between Santa Fe and Los Angeles passed through the Moab valley. Along this trade route mule trains carted wool blankets from Santa Fe, and huge herds of horses hoofed it east from California. Though it was probably unknown to Kor or Ingalls that day, a piece of Spanish Trail-era infamy lay below them at the end of Castle Valley, in a snarl of scrub oak at a creek called Pinhook, where 11 posse members lay buried in a mass grave. Theyd been shot in 1881 in a bloody ambush by Ute Indians, over a matter concerning the murder of a couple of cowboys and the theft of several hundred horses. The running battle had started in Dolores, Colorado[tk miles to the east] and it ranged across the desert for days. By its end, two-dozen men and women, Ute and white, were dead.
Nokia 8600 Luna. Kor and Ingalls didnt linger long on top of Castleton. Blue-black clouds were swirling over the Lasals and thunder was rumbling through Castle Valley as they hurriedly built a cairn and scratched a note staking their first ascent. By the time Kor banged in a piton anchor, a strong wind was gusting.
Huntley and I began rappelling as quickly as we were able due to fear of the storm approaching the summit. Bright flashes streaked through the rain curtain forcing upon us the fact that we were on a lightning rod, Kor recalled years later in a letter to desert climbing historian Eric Bjornstad.
Kor hit the ground first, unclipping from the last rappel and hiding under a rock overhang as a pall of windblown dust and driving rain rammed the tower. Still up on the cliff, Ingalls picked up the rope to start his descent, but he dumped it when a ground current flowing through it sent a painful jolt up his arm. Fearing electrocution, he sat out the storm huddled on the ledge. Lightning is a frequent hazard on Castleton. On the second ascent, Harvey T. Carter was shocked at the base of Castleton and lay unconscious for half an hour. More recently, thereve been fatalities from lightning.
When the storm blew past, Ingalls roped down to Kor. They had just climbed a route that would be followed by the majority of Castletons 4,000-plus visitors, and which would be lionized as a milestone in volumes like Fifty Classic Climbs of North America.
Reflecting on their brush with lightning and their jubilation that day, Kor later wrote, We congratulated ourselves on how fortunate we were to have gotten away without any injury from this strange hazard which occasionally confronts those who play in the steep lane.
Eric Bjornstads guidebook Desert Rock III records 15 more routes and variants since Castletons first ascent. The nearby formations of the Rectory, The Priest, The Nuns and Sister Superior offer about two dozen more. Castletons stand-out routes include the splitter cracks of the North Face (5.11b) by Ed Webster and Buck Norden in 1979, and the North Chimney (5.9) by Daniel Burgette and Allen Erickson in 1970. Both routes are as popular as the Kor-Ingalls route. A rarely traveled yet eye-catching line is the offwidth marathon of the West Face (5.11), done in 1971 by Jimmy Dunn, Billy Westbay, and Stewart Green. At the harder end of the scale, on a sea of calcite on the north face is Jay Smiths 1994 face climbing testpiece, Sacred Ground (5.12b).
Adjacent to Castleton on the 400-foot tall south prow of the Rectory is one of the most atmospheric crack climbs anywhere, Fine Jade (5.11-), by Chip Chace and Pat Ellingwood in 1984. Lurking behind The Rectory is The Priest, a tower of eerily human proportions. Days after Castletons first ascent, Harvey T. Carter and his newlywed wife Annie, with Kor and Fred Beckey hot on their heels, made its first ascent via Honeymoon Chimney, a classic tower route involving deep chimneying and delicate face climbing, now free at 5.11. Also on The Priest and the nearby Nun are Holier Than Thou (5.11c, on the Nun), by Jay Smith and Mark Hesse in 1995, and Excommunication (5.12b), on The Priests north arte, by this author and Renee Globis in 2002. Both routes offer face climbing on eruptions of calcite.
To save the land under Castleton Tower, the CRC and UOL understood that they had to save the Parriott Mesa parcel first. It was a two-step strategy based on the need to show SITLA that the preservation effort had teeth when it came to negotiating and fund-raising, and that locals, climbers, and a variety of town and state agencies supported conservation.
The developer whod bought the Parriott Mesa parcel was willing to sell it to anyone who would pony up enough cash, and he entered into talks with UOL. A price of $184,000 was negotiated, but the window of time UOL had to raise the money before the developer would nix the deal was brief. In May 2000, just three days before bulldozers were scheduled to start scraping roads and building sites, a private donor contributed the down payment, and a contract was drawn up deeding the land to UOL, and eternal preservation. The land under Parriott Mesa is now entirely paid for.
With Parriott Mesa saved, it was time to start negotiating with SITLA for the 221 acres underneath Castleton Tower.
SITLA currently holds about 3.5 million acres of land in Utah. The land was granted by congress at statehood in 1896 to help fund Utahs schools and other beneficiary institutions with revenue from land sales, or from leasing arrangements to grazing, mining, and forestry. SITLAs original land grant 106 years ago totaled about 7.5 million acres. What remains today is the unsold portion, and these lands appear across the map of Utah as a hatchwork of one-mile squares, or sometimes as irregular-shaped parcels acquired through land swaps to get SITLA land out of the middle of, say, a national park.
The most valuable SITLA land around populous areas like Salt Lake City was sold off in the first few decades of the Twentieth Century, and the proceeds mainly funded direct operating expenses of schools. Today, two percent of SITLAs holdings remain in the counties around Salt Lake City, where real estate is prime, and 98 per cent of its land lies in the rural counties that contain the scenic red rock country for which Utah is famed. It is inevitable, then, that therell be clashes between conservation interests and SITLAs appointed mandate to sell or lease its land for the good purpose of earning funds for schools and state institutions. Speaking on the issue of SITLAs duty, the Utah Attorney General is clear: The interest of the school and institutional trust beneficiary is paramount and must always prevail over any conflicting public use or purpose.
More simply stated, SITLA is obligated to make money for its beneficiaries (the schools), and it is not permitted to let public use (conservation or recreation) prevent it from making that money. Knowing that SITLA could not legally grant their land to conservation or pass up a chance to make money, UOL and CRC had but one option for saving Castleton: buy the land.
SITLA typically sells its property at public auctions. In this manner, many private citizens have bought the land of their dreams at a reasonable price; conservation groups have also purchased land for preservation, too. Just as often, developers with deeper pockets outbid everyone. Because SITLA is in the business of getting the most for its land, it had never made a negotiated land sale with a conservation group. But by early 1999 a groundswell of public support for preserving the 221-acre Castleton parcel persuaded SITLA to hold off on an auction and to discuss a conservation purchase with UOL. In addition, UOL and the town of Castle Valley persuaded SITLA to self-impose a moratorium on auctioning 4,000 other acres it owns in Castle Valley, until a study can assess the impact of growth to the area. At issue are wildlife habitat, game corridors, rare plants, water, aquifer and sewerage concerns, scenic values and impacts on the quality of life to the existing town. The Parriott Mesa and Castleton land sales had alerted the inhabitants of Castle Valley to the threat of development on the wild lands around them, and they had opted to work with UOL in a stewardship of Castle Valley. Said local resident and noted author Terry Tempest Williams, These lands we are trying to protect are critical to the integrity of the surrounding wildlands, part of Americas Redrock Wilderness Act now before Congress. In Castle Valley we are trying to extend our notion of community to include plants, animals, rocks, rivers and human beings.
Focusing on the Castleton parcel, UOL and SITLA negotiated a price of $640,000, and in January 2002 the two parties agreed to a purchase contract. UOL has until July 2003 to make the final payment. To date, UOL has raised a total of $324,000 toward this sum. With half the money yet to be found, people like Wendy Fisher, Executive Director of Utah Open Lands, is a busy fundraiser, but she is confident that the goal will be met. Says Fisher, There are places that hold such power that they define a community, an environment and even a way of life. If we cant save Castleton, with all that it represents, we have little hope of preserving lesser known but equally compelling landscapes.
Financial support has come from public and private conservation trusts, and from the climbing community. The Access Fund, the American Alpine Club, and climbing gear manufacturers like Petzl, Black Diamond, Patagonia have stood behind the cause, as have many individuals who have signed Castletons summit register, or who hope to some day.
The latest fund raising effort by UOL and CRC is a plan to save Castleton acre by acre. In this way donors can adopt an individual acre for a $3,000 contribution. David Erley, who, with Laura Kamala, co-directs the CRC, summed up the acre by acre plan like this: Regard your donation as a lifetime pass to one of the most special places on earth.
Indeed, when you stand on top of Castleton Tower on a calm day, it can be hard to leave. The way that Castletons shadow traverses the red-tinted landscape during the hours of your climb, rotating around the monolith as if its a giant sundial, is mesmerizing. By and large, that shadow passes over a landscape that has changed very little since Kor and Ingalls made their first ascent 41 years ago, and that land stands a chance of remaining unchanged for generations yet to come. All it will take, is money.
About the author:
Greg Child lives in Castle Valley. He has donated his writing fee from this story to the Castleton Tower Preservation Initiative.
