| Peaks: | Crestone Peak - 14,294 feet Crestone Needle - 14,197 feet |
Sorry for the long winded start, but I want to paint the best picture of what we experienced.
The adventure started leaving Colorado Springs at about 6:30 on Friday night, the 10th of Jul 09. We swiftly arrived into Westcliffe just over 2 hours later and progressed toward the S. Colony Lakes TH. After the horror stories that I have heard of the nasty 4WD road, I was scared to take my 2WD Jeep Cherokee (yes they do exist) up as far as I could go. It began to be dark as we crossed the first creek crossing. There were several folks up there. Some that made it consisted of Subaru Outbacks, a Honda CRV, and even a newer Volvo Sedan. We proceeded on as the road got rougher but not to bad. With easy maneuvering, we proceeded up the road in the dark abyss. At about 10, we made it to the last river crossing. Just before the crossing were a few smaller SUV's and a Subaru Outback (that must have taken a while). I would say this road is clearance issues and not 4WD issues. We crossed the river and began to ready our packs in the rain.
With enough gear for a two day adventure, we set off into the darkness and the rain stopped. It was maybe 11 Pm when we finished the easy 2 mile hike to the lower South Colony Lake. There was an awesome lightning show down in the Valley South of Westclifffe, with solid lightning strikes a couple per second and the moon was behind to paint the picture. I should have taken a photo. We made camp about 300 yds before the lake. I think we got to sleep at about 11:30 or so and set the alarm 4:30 with plans to step off at 5 AM. With the moon on the rise, we could see the silhouette of Crestone Needle looming beautifully above us.
The alarm went off at 4:30 and we readied our gear and ate a couple of quick snacks. We stepped off about 10 min after 5. It was already getting light out but no sun yet. As we headed up towards broken hand pass, the sun began to rise and add color to the Needle.
In the early sun, you can see my climbing partner Ben. We crossed these snow fields on the way up to Broken Hand pass, but these lower ones were well cut by other previous hikers and we felt we did not need our Ice Axes yet.
This picture was taken the next day from Humboldt, but it shows the full route up broken hand that we took.
After the flatter snow, we pulled out the Axes and began to kick steps. With a couple of our first easy class 3 manuvers of the day, we got around the rock, snow and ice, and ascended to the top of the pass which I think is around 13,000'. From there we could see Cottonwood lake which was still in shadow on the west side of the ridge. (no picture because there are too many). We turned right on the trail junction of the trail down to cottonwood and up to the Needle and went through the notch.
After the notch, we did about .25 mile maybe of class 2 traversing before getting to the "East Gully" as roach describes it. We started up the East Gully with very simple Class III maneuvers. It was fairly clear as to where to cross into the "West Gully." Just look carefully for the cairns to the left when the gully you are in starts to look like it will become more than class III. You shouldn't have to do any class 4 yet. When you cross into the west gully, you have to come up the ridge pictured below and as you can see, you are quite exposed for a few seconds. I would consider this easy class 4 to hard class 3 right here. The hand holds are plentiful on the strong conglomerate.
I apologize that I don't have many route pictures. It is hard to take them when you are route finding for a first time on a route sometimes. I will do my best to describe the important parts though. Taking a break, we looked back to the great sand dunes and our first views of Blanca, Little Bear, Ellingwood, and Lindsey to the South next to the San Luis Valley.
Me taking a break as we neared the summit-
Finally we made it! First ones of the day! I think it was about 8:30 at this point. The weather was absolutely beautiful. You could see smoke still lacing the horizons because of the fires going on but no clouds around anywhere. The weather was looking absolutely great for the Traverse.
Here is a summit photo after having our traditional shot of Whiskey at the top. Who knew brother in laws could have so much fun together. This was Ben's 2nd summit ever and 18 for me. I would not recommend this for anyone's second peak, but Ben used to be a climbing instructor in the Black Canyon when he went to Western State in Gunnison. His first peak (14er) was Pikes Peak Bar Trail in January 08. Nothing but 2 Epics thus far. It's hard for him to get out when he has 3 kids, but he did great the entire trip.
One more summit tradition and we were off for our rappel.
This was definitely class 4 and not class 5. If my butt wasn't puckering so much, I may have been able to downclimb this without a rope. The rope helps curb exposure (which is high here), but it's a long way to haul the 10lbs, the harnesses, and other various climbing gear. We actually brought a pretty decent rack that we really didn't need. We used the 1" webbing and a rappel ring to tie off and a couple of quick draws to that and the rope and of course a belay device. We only had one so Ben had to send it down the rope after I went down.
After securing our rappel gear, we began to descend down the North side of the needle. Unless you want to class 5 across, you have to drop much farther down in elevation than I was expecting to keep it mostly at class 3. The red line that I drew should be similar to the route that we took but not exact. You just follow the most logical route down basically. There are no cairns for a while but you have to stay as high as you feel comfortable without doing some sketchy down climbing. After a couple of ups and downs in this picture, you near the buttress on the left side of the picture where the red line stops. Here you have 2 options, either drop into the valley a couple of hundred feet lower or climb towards the notch next to the buttress. We chose to go right and not drop the 200' around the ridge. We could see a route that went down but couldn't see how hard the climbing was. We decided to chance it. There ended up being a 5.7 or so down climb of about 15 feet right into the notch. If you hold onto the spine you will lower your exposure to a nice landing 10' below. If you go too far to the left, you will have 30-50' of exposure. The 10' exposure option looked harder but the consequences were smaller so we went with that.
Unfortunately, from there I have no more pictures from the traverse. I quit taking pictures because the sweat was rolling out from under my helmet and we went up and down over several ridges. We made our way down that gulley about 100' in elevation and had to maneuver down a 10' drop into a snow drift at the bottom. That was a bit tricky. Finally, we spotted a cairn! Yay! This is where the inviting grassy ledge system that Roach describes comes into play. On every ridge, just look for the cairn on the next and make your way across.
I only brought 2 liters of water in a camel back and a filter. As it began to get hotter, I really sucked down the water and was figuring it was getting low. We pumped from some snow runoff somewhere near the end of the traverse. There were several available spots to do this. Just when you think you can't go over any more ridges because you are so tired, you finally arrive half way up what I think is the red gully. From here, this is the standard route up Crestone Peak I believe. I think we met up with it right at about 13000 feet but did not check the GPS. If you are going Peak to needle, you are going to be hard pressed to find the cairns to cross back over. My best advice would be to turn south towards the needle a few hundred feet before the bottom of the red gulley. There are cairns up on the rocks but they are small.
From here, we had to choose between steep class 3 ridge with a few class 4 maneuvers through some ravines or straight up the 40-45 deg snow slope. We decided to go down and test the snow. It seemed good although we could hear some runoff underneath. We stayed off to the sides away from the runoff. Here is Ben on the Couloir-
And them me on the couloir-
The snow was soft enough to not need crampons but still needed stiff kicks to set steps. It was Axe kick kick all of the way up.
Nearing the top –
Now the point where you see Ben is where we decided to hop onto the rocks in up the middle. There was just too much water running under the snow and we were suddenly post holing up to our thighs. With a class 3 scramble, we made it to the top of the ridge in another 15 minutes or so from here.
I didn't get a picture of this but you arrive on the ridge right between the two summits and can see down into the Steep north couloirs. That was our plan for descent into bear's playground to Humboldt until we actually saw it. It did not look like an inviting climb down. We weren't sure if the higher true summit was right or left. There were cairns on both sides. I pulled out the GPS and it told us to go LEFT, so we did. The left is probably more scenic towards the S. Colony lakes basin, but we wanted the true summit first. We dropped packs just past the ridge and finished with Nalgenes, and a Camara. Finally with some easy 3rd class climbing and medium exposure we made it to the top of mountain that was once said that it can't be climbed, Crestone Peak. We were so exhausted but also glad that the weather had held so well. I think it was about 1:45 PM at this point but don't know for sure. As tired as we were, I forgot the flask of whiskey in my pack so no celebration of that. We got a quick photo in celebration though-
There was a brand new summit register there that had never been signed. We were the first and it looked from the one snow trail up the couloir that no one had taken our route for quite a few days, maybe since the weekend before.
Sunday's plan was Kit Carson and Challenger until we saw this
You can see the Avenue still had snow on it that looked too scary. We thought we would spare our wives nerves after the gentleman taking the spill on Kirk couloir on the other side a couple of days before and decided at this point that since we would not be able to make Humboldt before dark that we would just have an easy day on Humboldt on the next day and save these two peaks for a later adventure from Willow Lakes.
Here is a look back down our route from the needle for the traverse. The red line is where I think we went roughly-
Here is Ben descending the class 3 back to the ridge where we left our packs-
We ended up deciding that our best and safest route would be back down the way we came then stay straight to the cottonwood lake basin and resentfully ascend back over broken hand pass. After descending the top snow portion and having to face the mountain as we went down, we got back to the rocks, down climbed the rocks back to the snow, and then faced out as we continued down. Eventually, we got lower than where we hopped onto the snow and it was new route finding from here. I turned up and snapped a pic of the traverse. I drew a line of where I think we roughly went earlier. The top of the needle is far right. If you are going Peak to needle, I think you have to go up right where this nipple is.
Nearing the bottom of the couloir, the snow became scary and water was rushing loudly underneath. The sun was really taking a toll on the snow at this point. We decided to pull off the right side and follow the actual route the best we could as we made our way down farther. Eventually, near the bottom of the snow, we knew that we were going to need to cross before it got too dangerous again. We popped across and exhaustedly climbed up about 100'. We came over the ridge and followed the grass down. This did not follow Bill's standard route but was actually pretty well cairned.
I was exhausted after carrying the rope all but the first part of the trek up broken hand pass. I rested while ben secured the rope to his pack for the remainder of the trip.
The plan from here was to stay as high as possible and try not to drop as low as cottonwood lake. Haha… Fat chance. We had to turn back from a few ledges and eventually just made our way down to the lake. There is no other way without going on crazy cliffs or way too high up. We approached the lake and pumped some water for another nalgene refill for both of us and rested for about 10 more minutes.
I tried to draw the route back up broken hand as best as I could. This side is only class 2 but is full of steps. It reminded me of the Manitou incline except at much higher elevation. We snailed our way up this and looked at our final rough back to camp. I like to call this the "un-approach." The front of broken hand was still class 3. It did not change throughout the day unfortunately. We made it back to our camp at about 5:15 for just almost exactly 12 hours of climbing in the Sangres.
We decided on a half hour nap before anything (except drinking Gatorade and eating gummy bears) which turned into over 2 hours. I finally managed to get up and go pump some fresh water and fill our containers for dinner activities. Ben collected wet wood for a fire while I was gone. I cooked dinner and made a few attempts at the fire but it kept dying out. I eventually gave up on that. Ben only ate about half of his beef stew before retiring to his sack. He was beat and felt like absolute crap. I felt great so I ate my lasagna and made some tea which would be cold by morning. I then cooked some rice and ate it with his beef stew. The rice took a while so I puffed on my tobacco pipe and had a couple of shots of whisky and enjoyed the stars. We had a beautiful day and beautiful weather. I cleaned everything up and decided to try and sleep outside. I got all setup with my sleeping bag in my bivy on the thermarest and watched the stars for about 10 minutes. I saw tons of satellites. It was cool. Then crash, here came the thunder and lightning. I didn't really feel like sleeping out there under a storm, so I crawled into the tent and crashed.
To be continued….
-Crampons and rope would not be necessary if climbing peak to needle.
-Crampons not necessary either way
- Ice Axe… Definitely!
Day 2 (Humboldt) is soon to come. I will attach the link of that one once it is done to this so you can see that too. Hope this helps anyone with questions about the traverse. I have many more pictures so ask if you need more info.
Hope you enjoyed it!
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