An oldie but a goodie TR for this weekend. Heading down to Wolf Creek tomorrow, should be fun..

Crestone Needle, 14,197’, South Couloir, March 12, 2007.

Partners: Pete Sowar, Scott Yost

Of Colorado’s 54 peaks over 14,000’, the last one to be climbed was Crestone Needle, in 1916 by Albert Ellingwood and Eleanor Davis. The two returned in 1925 and were joined by two others on the first ascent of the arete that now bears Ellingwood’s name (5.7). The history of mountaineering is chock-full of pioneering women, and the Needle is no exception.

Last week, a group of us skied Crestone Peak, and as soon as I looked at the South Couloir on the Needle, I knew it was a line I wanted to ski, and soon, before the Sangre de Cristos’ short spring season started to end.

Brittany and I headed off to ski Mt. Sherman in the Mosquitos on Sunday. It was a nice relaxing fourteener descent, in good snow to top it off. After that, we parted ways and I headed off from Fairplay to Salida to meet up with Pete and Scott. We got to our hotel in Westcliffe, and headed to the local Irish pub for a Guiness and some grub. The day dawned bright and clear, and we fired up the snowmobiles and made our way to South Colony lake. Even though Scott has his own snowmobile, we tandemed in order to avoid taking 2 cars and 2 trailers from Crested Butte.

We skinned right up this gully, which provides easy winter access to the upper lake.

Crestone Needle and the elegant Ellingwood arête drew us forward and after 40 minutes of skinning, we were already done with all of the skinning we would do that day. Skis and poles were traded for ice axes and crampons, and we made our way up towards Broken Hand pass. By now, we had picked up on the fact that someone had been this way recently. Sadly, the bootpack that they had made was blown over and gone for all intents and purposes, so we made a new one.

Once over the pass, the previous day’s tracks were now visible and useful as we traversed the south side to get to the base of the couloir. The most difficult climbing of the day was soon encountered at the end of the traverse. Thankfully, Crestone conglomerate rock is a joy to climb and this rock band was negotiated easily.

From this point forward, there was only one track in the snow, where there had been two. This gave us something to ponder as we made our way up the couloir.

At this point the ski tracks ended and it was clear we had reached someone’s highpoint. The slope got steeper and narrower at this point but things were going smooth and the climbing was a blast.

Pete, minutes from the top

From the top, Humboldt and Pikes in the distance.

Looking down the north side.

From left to right, a gaper with a camera, the Needle-to-Peak traverse, Kit Carson, and another camera-wielding gaper. Photo taken by a camera toting gaper.

The mountains were already inspiring, but thanks for adding to it, Mr. Davenport.

The “Dav shot”

All these action shots were taken by Pete Sowar. I screwed up my continuous settings AGAIN and all my action shots are blown out. We were able to ski all the way down to the end of the previous days’ tracks without taking our skis off. The climb out of the couloir up to the traverse proper was probably the scariest part of the day, with mud and wet grass and rocks and ice and snow.

The snow was ripping up Broken hand pass, but we knew once we got down a little we would have a pow run to finish off the day.

Up to this point, the Sangres had been treating us right.Sadly, our luck was about to change. During Pete and Scott’s tandem snowmobile ride out, they came up on a corner too fast and had a head-on with a tree. Thankfully we were able to tie my tow rope to Pete’s sled and move it enough to get it out.

It still ran and we got to the trailhead OK. The front end was pretty smashed up unfortunately, but at least it was fixable and at least none of us were broken in the process. Crestone Needle is truly one of Colorado’s finest peaks.

Painting cabinets in my condo today, so I only have time for a quick TR transfer this morning..

North face of Mt. Democrat via Kite Lake, 5-15-07

Partners: Kyle, Jordan

I left the front range early on the 15th, driving through some rain along the way. I wasn’t too optimistic about the weather, but once I got on the other side of the Eisenhower tunnel, the weather got considerably better. Since I was going to head from Democrat towards the Sawatch and some more skiing and Jordan was heading back to the front range, we dropped off a vehicle at the Montgomery res. trailhead and then went to Kite lake, where Kyle had spent the night.

The fog was thick, but it cleared from time to time and we were able to see enough to make our way up.

The route from Kite lake is quick and easy, and we were on the summit ridge in no time.

This ‘S’ gully on Bross looked like a fun cruise and a decent route for boring Bross.

Looks good:

Jordan, dropping in:

Frank:

Jordan, lower down:

Frank:

A look at the face. Where the route constricts and doglegs at the bottom, the route stays about one ski-length wide.

As we skied, then walked down the valley, the North side of Lincoln showed some fun lines, although many of them appeared to close out.

Ah, the icefall, I know we’re close

Meanwhile, Kyle decided to take his own line down the Emma lake side, since it was a line he had been thinking about for some time:

His Tr is over here: http://splitboard.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t=3684

The corn snow on Democrat was excellent, and with a shuttle the bang for the buck on this one is pretty good, something like a 5 hour day.D

Yet another old TR to put on 14erskiers.com… Hopefully a new post later on today…

Partners: Brittany, Jordan, Kelly, Jeremy

Mt Lindsey is a high peak lying just at the head of the Huerfano River, just east of some other high peaks: Blanca, Ellingwood, and Little Bear. Access is long, following a scenic road next to the river for many miles from the tiny town of Gardner. Along the roadway, we spotted a crevice in the rocks which contained a statue of the Virgin Mary and some candles. Were we in Peru or Mexico? No, just southern Colorado, but it still feels like a whole different world down here, well removed from Crested Butte, let alone the Front Range. Its experiences like this that makes seeking out Colorado’s highest summits so worthwhile to me and many others.

We arrived Saturday afternoon as a small storm was winding down. Jeremy and I fired up the snowmobiles to scout out the route for the next day, while Kelly and Brittany set up a campsite down valley on public land. It’s a good thing we scoped things out, as it made our predawn routefinding much easier, and allowed the snowmobile track to set up. Jordan met us a little later and we went to bed early, given our 3am wake-up time. We drove back up to the snowmobiles and hit the trail around 4:30, and started skinning 45minutes later. The sun eventually made its’ presence and lit up the stunning NE face of Blanca and Ellingwood.

We kept skinning up the valley, one drainage too far as it turned out, but caught this great view of the Crestone group as we ascended.

We crested a small col and realized that we needed to drop a few hundred feet into the next drainage. Given the flatness of the terrain, we decided to have a figure 8 competition to keep it interesting. With Jordan judging, Brittany and I took the crown with ease.

Another quick climb found us at another saddle, where we had an amazing view of the San Luis valley, covered with clouds.

Looking North again, the Crestone group had also disappeared into the clouds

We booted up a ridge and found ourselves at the 13,100’ saddle between the Iron Nipple and Lindsey, with our somewhat intimidating route up Lindsey laid out before us.

We again dropped some elevation, and began booting up Lindsey’s N face. At many points along this climb, we were on very exposed and mixed terrain, but everyone made it up just fine.

Along the way, plenty of other great looking lines kept popping out, like these lines above Kelly’s visor.

We reached the summit and were greeted by the harsh revelation that we had only reached a false summit and the real one looked like a long ways off.

Thankfully the climb from the false summit only took 15 minutes and we were on the summit at 2:30pm. Brittany approaches the real summit:

The good news was that we had almost 2,000’ of good snow below us. Jeremy rips it up:

Jordan:

Frank:

Kelly:

Brittany:

and lower, with a view of our line:

Our day was far from over, though, and we had another 600’ climb back to the 13,100’ col. At this point the clouds were thickening and the winds were picking up. Here’s Brittany dropping off the ridge to get out of the wind.

We followed the correct drainage out this time, which would be an absolutely amazing run in deep powder, as the drainage was fairly wide and reminded me of a steep groomed run at a ski area, for thousands of feet. We made it back to the sleds and then the car, 14 hours after starting in the morning. In total, we covered about 7 miles by snowmobile, another 11miles by foot, and skied around 5,500’ of vertical. Another great day in the mountains with great people…

This is another 14er that I never got around to doing a proper TR for back in ’06. Back then, I didn’t have a digital camera so Jeremy Wegner took all of these photos with a throwaway camera.

The San Juans really didn’t have a great season in ’05-’06. For many years, I have wanted to ski the NE face of Wilson Peak, which is the same face seen in Coors commercials:

Being a native of Golden, CO in the shadow of the Coors Brewery, this face had special significance for me. Still, I hadn’t quite made it down there to give it a go. I wasn’t expecting much in ’06 either until Chris Davenport and crew skied there during his 14er project. A wet springtime storm managed to plaster the high peaks and they were in surprisingly good shape. After viewing his TR, Jeremy and I headed down there along with Luke Shaffner to see if we could ski some, or even all three peaks of the Wilson Group ourselves.

We were able to get close to the summer trailhead, where we camped out in a really nice area that even had firewood ready to go for us. We got off to an early start and made our way on foot and skis towards the Rock of Ages saddle. Luke was having issues with his gear and we ended up taking a long time getting to the saddle. We decided that we were going too slow to ski anything other than Wilson Peak, so we headed up the ridge from there. In the summer, the main route actually traverses towards the ridge that separates Wilson Peak and Gladstone, but we headed directly up the SW ridge.

This route was quite difficult, especially in ski boots, so we eventually cut our losses and traversed over to the south side of Wilson. Our fun wasn’t over yet, though, because we summited the false summit and still had a steep downclimb before we could finish our ascent. The downclimb:

And the final push to the summit:

We stayed on the summit for a while and then began our descent on the steep face below. Jeremy got to lead, since it was his 30th birthday. Usually an alpiner these days, Jeremy was dropping the knee on his teles that day:

The face is a little complicated, and we were careful not to descend one of the couloirs that dead-end. A look back at the face:

From the bottom of the face we made the long traverse back towards the road and our truck. Luke had made his way down a prominent couloir above the rock of ages saddle, and we were able to meet up with him again at the trailhead. This classic route in Telluride’s backyard is well worth the trip and ranks as one of the better 14er descents, in my opinion.

I’m in the process of updating my 14er TR’s and getting them all here on 14erskiers.com. I never really wrote up a good account of this one, since Pyramid was well before I owned a digital camera. I did shoot video, and perhaps at some point I’ll be able to get the video and helmetcam into a little video clip that I could put on youtube. Jeremy Wegner shot a few photos, but they were with a throw-away camera and there weren’t too many of them. Still, I’ll be able to put a couple of them up.

We drove to Aspen and the winter closure at the T-Lazy 7 ranch. Joining me were Sean Crossen, who was still trying to complete his own 14er skiing goals, plus Jeremy Wegner, John Jasper, and Pete Sowar. We had been contemplating another go at Capitol, which we had tried a week or so beforehand, but the lure of Pyramid was just as high or higher than doing another slog up to Capitol.

After camping right on the road at the trailhead, we got going at dark:thirty o’clock and fired up the snowmobiles. Pete and I were tandeming on one sled while towing Jasper, and we forgot all about him and towed him across some sections of melted-out asphalt. We geared up at Maroon lake and headed upvalley. We soon left the valley, a little before the standard Pyramid summer trail, since a tree chute goes straight up and into the cirque. We were surprised to see another snowmobile head up the valley, but thankfully they were headed to North Maroon. The cirque under the North face of Pyramid is a powerful place, and we were lucky enough to see it just as dawn was hitting.

We put the crampons on and started up the easy couloirs to reach the Northeast ridge at 13,000′. Looking up at the remaining thousand feet from the col remains one of the most memorable, scary, and exciting moments of my ski career. Pyramid looks truly amazing from there. The ridge quickly gains exposure on both sides, but the climbing wasn’t terribly difficult and the snow conditions were excellent. Despite the Chris Davenport/Ted Mahon/Neil Beidleman ascent and descent of this route just a week earlier, the mountain had already erased all of their tracks and we were on our own to find our way through the small cliffbands near the summit that are the cruxes of this route. This is the only photo I have of the ascent:

The final cliffband slowed us down for a bit, and I tried to traverse around it on the left (East) side, but this sent me into increasingly rotten snow with a ton of exposure. I worked my way back and discovered that the rest of the group was going straight up the middle of the cliff. The interesting thing about that was that Davenport’s TR said that he and Ted did the exact same thing! There was one tricky drytool move and the next thing we knew, we were on the top.

Unfortunately, I don’t have a single photo of the descent. Right off the top, the first turn is well over 50 degrees and uncomfortably close to some huge cliffs. The snow was great though- somewhat powdery at times and corn snow in others. We continued making our way down, which took a while considering the large group we had. Near the bottom of the main couloir, we had to go right through a pillowy section where Chris Landry had downclimbed way back in 1978 during his first descent. This section was fun as well, and after that we had hero corn for a couple thousand feet straight to the valley floor.

When people ask me which fourteener was my favorite one to ski, I don’t need to hesitate- this was it. There are very few routes in Colorado that can match its’ aesthetic quality, its’ 4,000′ size, or its’ overall steepness. Even skiers in BC or Alaska could visit Colorado and be blown away by the quality of this route. It’s amazing not only that this route laid dormant for nearly 30 years, but also amazing that this route has been skied by quite a few groups since the Davenport party re-opened the route a week before we skied it.