Yet another nighthike

This one was the most ambitious of them all, Castle Mountain. We headed out to the base early, then rested there for a bit before the hike. That was the stupid part of the whole excursion, cause none of us actually got any sleep there, me in the less than comfortable car, Jon and David in the mosquitoful outside. Started the actual hike at midnight, and it was 11 am before we were at the parking lot again. Overall it's about 28 km hoizontal, 1.4 km vertical. Though only a couple steep parts overall, so it's long but not difficult. We did almost get lost a couple times in the dark, but managed to find the right way again. The weirdest part was when we saw another group of headlamps heading our way. But we couldn't hear them, and it was hard to tell how far away they were. But how incredibly unusual would it be for there to be another crazy group of nighthikers choosing to do the same mountain as us on the same day?! Eventually, someone realised that the lights were actually car headlamps from the very distant road, but there were enough trees and distance that it just seemed like a small group of headlamps slowly moving around. I guess that explained why they were all halogen, none LED. The worst part of the hike was that when stopping to take some photos, I put down the hiking pole I'd borrowed from David, and forgot to pick it up again. Figured we'd find it on the way back, but that was a really big rocky plateau, and even with 3 of us looking for 45 minutes or more, didn't come across it. That makes it a kindof expensive hike. It answers my debate as to whether the poles are really worthwhile... with the losability factor, I'd say no! :) We'd been going fairly liesurely, and the sun was almost up with us still a ways from the summit, but we poured on some last minute power and made it up there just before the sun crested the mountain! There were a few interesting things at the summit, see the photos for details. The hike down was okay, but Jon and David were fairly exhausted by that point. I had discovered about 2/3 of the way up that I was almost done my 3 litres of water, so I had to go conservative and still ran out with a long ways to go. The last part before reaching the car seemed to drag on and on. And boy were we sleepy for the trip home, I'm not going to drive in such a state again. Though we had a good 'breakfast' around noon in Banff. I had really planned on being home a few hours earlier than that (Kane said 7-11 hours, and we're usually on the early side of that, I think he messed up, someone said the old version of his book said 7 hours one way!), had planned on having a few hours sleep in the afternoon, but alas, got home, showered, last-minute prepped for Geoff's bachelor party, and headed right out again. But managed to maintain conciousness just fine all evening! Who needs sleep anyways!