Crestone Peak: A ski

Date: 4/25/09
Peak: Crestone Peak and Crestone Needle
Routes: South Gully’s on both
Crew: Joseph Brannan and Myself

I’ve been a list guy. I’ve been a list guy for far too long. I had the 14er list; just to climb them all. Then I had the 14er list to ski them all. Then I had the list to climb them all in winter. Well the whole winter thing has really lost it’s appeal. This standard of having to walk the snow covered roads for miles and miles just doesn’t make sense to me. All it really does is prolong the amount of time it takes to get to the trailhead where, if you’re lucky, the real climbing might actually begin. That said I brought my snowmobile down to the south colony lakes trailhead this past weekend to get us up what would have been an annoying slog up the road. The first 1/2 mile or so was a mix of rock and snow, after which we had decent snow coverage up the road with a couple small exceptions. The snowmobiling was pretty easy overall.

We ditched the sled around 11,200 or so and started the skin up through the forest and made very quick time to treeline where we started skinning on an ascending traverse towards broken hand pass. Eventually we gave up on skinning and succumbed to booting the final few hundred vertical to the saddle.

Photo: Jordan

We came around the corner and found a tent full of people on top of broken hand pass! Nice spot! Windy as hell, but makes for a short climb. We also got our first view of the needle, we were thriving with excitment!

Photo: Joe

Photo: Jordan

It made sense to us to leave this one for second, especially since the three camped out here were headed up and would leave us a stair case to the top. We stripped skins and skied down in to cottonwood creek. It took all of about 3 minutes to hit our low point down below the magnificent Red Gully of Crestone Peak.

We put the skins on for a couple hundred vertical, to the base of the chute that led all the way to the valley floor.

Photo:Jordan

The booting commenced: Joe getting after it.

Photo: Jordan

Me following:

Photo: Joe

I took my turn:

Photo: Joe

Joe charging again:

Photo: Jordan

We were near the top of the chute when Joe told me ” Well finish her off!”

I was happy to do so. Something weird goes on in my head when I get to the more technical part of a climb. The whole way up a long booter, I am willing to do what I can to contribute to the teams success, but I don’t really enjoy it mentally, the monatony I mean. But in this case I was happy to take the lead again. I love it when it gets a bit more technical. It keeps the mind busy.

Photo: Joe

We sat in the little saddle below the summit for a bit and ate some Hot Ramen noodles and talke about how bad we thought the summit of Kit Carson looked for a ski. Funny, I got a text from a friend who had skied it the next day. Oh well, it must have been doable.

Crestone peak is one that doesn’t fill in to the exact summit of the peak but does come pretty damn close. We were within 5 vertical feet of the summit where we clicked (or dynafiddled) into our skis and began a short side step to a ledge of snow that required a small drop to get into the snow. Joe making it look a little bigger than it was: