Comments (0)

By Terry, August 28, 2010 3:23 pm

Mt. Lindsey (14,042 ft.) viewed from the route up Huerfano Peak

Iron Nipple (13,500 ft.)

Approaching “Huerfano Peak” (13,828 ft.)

GPS profile of our route Mt. Lindsey’s northwest ridge, Iron Nipple, and Huerfano Peak

Elevation and Google Earth profiles

Chris is my original hiking buddy. From when I first started hiking not too long ago, he has been a constant and consistent companion. Even though we are not able to get out and hike together as much as I’d like to, he has always been a solid and dependable friend who is willing to push his limits with me. I am thankful and appreciate that he trusts me enough to allow me to show him places that wouldn’t normally be inside his comfort zone. That kind of trust doesn’t come from just anybody; it’s a bond that is developed through years of experiences together or because of kindred spirits. I have not lead Chris astray and after years of hiking and climbing together, I feel I have a pretty firm grasp of what he’s capable of doing.

Mt. Lindsey, while not the most difficult 14er in the Sangre de Cristo Range, offers climbers a 3rd Class experience with a 4th Class move or two thrown in for good measure via it’s northwest ridge. After almost an entire summer of climbing Class 3, 4, and even a low Class 5 pitch, my confidence has reached a place that I never felt it would be. Climbing Crestone Needle the week before with Jodi was a lot of fun and, like Chinese food, it left me hungry for more. About mid-week before the climb, I had no plans and Lindsey’s northwest ridge came up as a last resort. I sent Chris an email and asked if he wanted to join me; I had invited him to join Jodi and me the weekend before, but a hamstring injury he sustained while playing softball kept him sidelined. He checked his schedule, cleared it with his wife, Julie, and the trip was set. I also advised him that if the weather was nice and we were feeling good, I wanted to try and summit Iron Nipple (sorry, folks, I don’t name them, just climb them ) and “Huerfano Peak” (the quotations are because although it is one of the Centennial Peaks, it is not officially named this). Chris would drive to my place from his home in Monument and we would leave from here. I wanted to leave at 1:30 AM as I knew from previous trips to the area that it took right about three hours to reach the trailhead.

Taking I-25 south to Walsenburg, Chris and I couldn’t believe how warm it was outside. Once south of Pueblo and approaching Walsenburg, the outside thermometer in my truck was reading 78°. We stopped at a convenience store so I could pick up a sandwich to take with me before heading north to Gardner. From Gardner, the trailhead is about twenty-one miles west of Hwy 69. We arrived there at almost exactly 4:30, strapped on our packs, stretched a bit, and hit the trail.

I led Chris on the semi-dark trail. A nearly-full moon illuminated our surroundings and was quite beautiful! Chris turned off his headlamp for a little while and walked the trail by moonlight. Once back under the tree canopy, though, he turned it back on. The trail is nice and relatively flat for the first mile or so and was pleasant to hike on. Once we reached the Huerfano River, I stepped carefully across it while trying to maintain my balance with trekking poles. I still ended up stepping into the water though. Chris attempted to do the same northwestsans trekking poles) and slipped a little before stepping into the water. He quickly reached the other side and winced. I asked him if he was alright. He indicated that he may have re-aggravated his hamstring injury. I was concerned by this and told him that I didn’t want it to get any worse. If he felt that he needed to go back to the truck, it would not be a big deal to me. We waited for a few minutes, Chris stretched his hamstring for a bit, and indicated that he wanted to continue on. I asked him to let me know if it got worse. I don’t think Julie would be very happy with me if he returned home in worse condition than when he left!

As the trail meandered and weaved through the darkened tree canopy, we lost it a couple of times. There was a minute amount of backtracking involved to locate the correct path, but we were always able to find it. The trail eventually parallels Nipple Creek and climbs steeply on its southeast bank. It was around here that I lost the trail for a few minutes. We hiked up a steep, grassy slope to get back on trail. I asked Chris how his hamstring was doing and he replied, “I don’t know how much more of that I can do.” I needed to be more careful about staying on-trail.

We crossed over Nipple Creek and the trail climbed steeply through thinning trees as we approached treeline. While not up quite yet, the lightening of the eastern horizon provided us with enough illumination that we were able to turn off our headlamps. Once we rounded the top of a hill, I called Chris’ attention to our west. It was his first time seeing Blanca Peak and Ellingwood Point from this close of a distance and I immediately knew that he was as taken-in by them as I was when I first did this hike back in 2008. The east face of Blanca is one of Colorado’s greatest mountain walls and is awe-inspiring. Descending into a basin, we watched as sunrise illuminated some clouds behind Iron Nipple to our left, then saw first light on Blanca and Ellingwood. I stopped to take photos of both. Again, I asked Chris how his hamstring was feeling. He indicated that it was a little sore, but not enough to prevent him from continuing.

Chris and I crossed the basin and began ascending the trail up to Lindsey’s northwest ridge. From my previous trip, I knew that we needed to first gain the saddle between Lindsey and Iron Nipple. The standard route up Lindsey involved a nasty Class 2+ scramble up a gully filled with loose soil and rocks. When I summited the peak the first time, I spent about five minutes trying to scramble directly up the gully before abandoning it and climbing the more-solid Class 3 rock to the right of it. It was not an enjoyable route for me in the slightest (I was also a lot fatter back then) and know a lot of people echo that sentiment. I had heard so many great things being said about the northwest face by comparison, though. The closer we got to the saddle, the more excited I became. Chris advised me, though, that while hiking didn’t seem to be aggravating his injury too much, it might be a different story once we started climbing the ridge. He graciously said that if it came to that, he would hike back down into the basin and wait for me. I didn’t feel right about the thought of abandoning him and going off by myself, but we still had some time for him to make that decision.

We exchanged greetings with a couple of hikers that we passed along the way to the saddle before continuing on. When we reached the saddle, we were bathed in warm sunlight and took a moment to rest. To our right was the false summit of Mt. Lindsey — sometimes referred to as Northwest Lindsey. The actual summit of Lindsey wasn’t viewable from there. We also clearly saw the Class 4 crux wall along the northwest ridge. From the saddle, it does appear foreboding. I’ve illustrated this photo to show the location of the crux. When Chris asked how we were going to get up and over that, I just told him, “Very carefully,” and assured him that it isn’t normally as bad as it looks from afar or in photos. It was apparent that he was nervous about climbing it, but made no indication that he wanted to turn around. He was placing a lot of faith in me to be able to get him up and down safely. The climb was going to be challenging for him; the most difficult peak we summited previously was Longs Peak. I wasn’t going to let him down, though!

Chris and I hiked along Lindsey’s standard trail for a few minutes before I checked our location on my GPS. Apparently, we overshot the turn-off to gain the ridge, but the rock just to our right looked extremely climbable. We stopped to don our helmets; it was going to be mostly Class 3 most of the way to the summit from there. Once our helmets were in place, we began to climb up the solid rock and a few minutes later found ourselves atop the ridge. The crux wall seemed to stare us down with an evil eye. Chris asked again how we were going to get up it. I reassured him that once we got to it’s base, it isn’t going to look that bad. He followed my lead as we headed up the northwest ridge.

A photo that Chris took of me on the way up the northwest ridge

I had originally wanted to stay a little bit higher on the ridge. There were a few short, exposed ledges which would have allowed us to stay high and not have to lose elevation. I called Chris’ attention to the ledges and he said that he would be uncomfortable crossing over a gully up high. I wanted him to have good memories of the trip (not terrifying ones), so I told him we could descend into the gully below us and cross low. Once in the gully, another one loomed ahead of us. It was the gully that led to the crux wall. Chris asked me how close he should be to me. I told him that he should be close enough to see where I’m placing my hands and feet and would be able to spot him if he needed some assistance finding a correct route up. I, in turn, would need to temper my ascent speed. He was doing fine so far, so I wasn’t too concerned about it. In years past, I had troubles keeping up with him, so it was an odd position for me to be in, but I also knew the hamstring injury was hindering him as well.

A few photos of Chris scrambling up the gully beneath the crux wall

Once at the top of the gully, Chris and I continued to climb up some great Class 3 rock. I saw that Chris’s confidence was slowly growing; this was the most sustained climbing that he had done and didn’t seem too bothered by his hamstring. Despite this, I new he was also growing nervous about the most difficult section of our climb. I stopped a couple of times to take photos of the route above us and allow us some time to rest. We were nearing the crux wall and it wouldn’t be long before we had to choose our route to get over it. After about ten minutes or so of climbing, we found ourselves staring up at the crux wall.

The Class 4 crux along Mt. Lindsey’s northwest ridge

According to the route guide, we had three options on how to get up and over the crux wall. We could go straight up it, to the right of it, or to the left of it. I initially chose the direct route up it. Chris decided to try and climb a route to the left of me, but still straight up. I found myself above him, but I could not see what he was climbing on due to a small rib between us. I asked him how his route was looking, but he didn’t sound very hopeful. I was not having much luck, either, and was running out of hand and foot holds. Looking over to my left, I instructed Chris to climb down from where he was and climb the wall off to the left side as the rock seemed to have more ledges. I down-climbed from my position and quickly scrambled up so I could spot him. The route over the left side of the crux wall proved to be an easier choice and once over it, we both found ourselves scrambling back over to the top of the wall without much difficulty. The rest of the ridge to the summit of Northwest Lindsey was before us. It was basically going to be a Class 2 walk-up to it, then over to the true summit of Mt. Lindsey.

Looking over at the summit of Mt. Lindsey from the direction of Northwest Lindsey

Once we walked onto the summit of Northwest Lindsey, we stopped for a few minutes and I heard Chris breathe a sigh of relief. The difficult climbing was over. Mt. Lindsey was only a short walk away, so we quickly strode over to it and sat down for a well deserved rest. I turned on my phone and found that I had full cell service up there. I called Julie and let Chris talk to her for a few minutes before breaking out some snacks. Of course, I couldn’t leave without a few summit shots.

Blanca, Ellingwood, and Little Bear

Chris looking cold on the summit (it was a bit nippy)

Iron Nipple (l) and Huerfano Peak (r) viewed from Mt. Lindsey

Panorama taken from the summit of Mt. Lindsey

We must’ve been on the summit for about 20-25 minutes before the hikers that we passed on the way up arrived. Chris and I packed-up our thinks, bade them farewell, and headed back down. Chris wanted to take the standard north face gully down, so we started descending that way. It wasn’t long before we encountered more hikers. For the most part, we stayed along the Class 3 rock on our left until we got down to the col (notch) at the top of the real nasty gully. We crossed over to our right and descended the rock there while avoiding some hikers that were coming up. One of them had a dog that knocked loose some rocks that fell down the gully. Luckily, it didn’t cause too big of a slide, but I wouldn’t have wanted to be under it. Continuing down, Chris and I crossed the gully again to our left and began to descend again. Chris commented that maybe we should have climbed back down the way we went up! It wasn’t as bad as I remember it being, but I wasn’t in as good of shape two years ago, either. We passed a few more groups of hikers on our way back down to the trail. When we reached it, both of us breathed a sigh of relief while heading toward the saddle. On the way, I asked Chris how his energy level was. He replied, “I know exactly what you’re thinking.” Yes, I wanted to hike over to Iron Nipple and Huerfano Peak. He indicated that his energy level seemed to be fine as was his hamstring. Once at the saddle, we continued along the ridge toward Iron Nipple.

On our approach to Iron Nipple, we encountered a couple of hikers on their way down. I remembered spotting someone on Lindsey’s northwest ridge far ahead of us earlier, but had forgotten about it. I asked if they went over to Huerfano Peak as well and they indicated they did. We parted ways and Chris and I continued our ascent of Iron Nipple. Instead of climbing up a small gully we saw them descend down, we traversed over to the right of the rock formation between us and the Nipple. The route had a little bit of exposure; once across the rock, we traversed back up to a green, grassy area. In this photo, you can make out a rocky gully heading up the center of Iron Nipple. We ascended this and worked our way slowly to summit (which is off to the left and not quite visible from this vantage point). It must’ve taken us about twenty minutes to reach the summit ridge. Once I topped-out on it, I was treated to as sight and sort of a surprise: Iron Nipple had a mini-knife-edge! It was maybe about twenty-five feet across with exposure not even approaching what I encountered on the southwest ridge of Little Bear or on Capitol Peak, but it still kind of tickled me. “How do you feel about a knife edge?” I shouted down to Chris as he approached me. It was completely walkable. I asked Chris to take a couple of photos of me as I crossed and I would do the same for him from the other side.

Here I am crossing Iron Nipple’s knife edge

Chris crossing Iron Nipple’s knife edge

We reached the summit of Iron Nipple and stayed only for a few minutes. I did some goofy things up there that I wanted Chris to take a photo of, but he accidentally took a video of it (which I won’t post here because it’s kind of silly). I did take a photo of Chris, though.

Looking back down toward the Huerfano River Basin from the summit of Iron Nipple

Chris on the summit of Iron Nipple. Mt. Lindsey is in the background

Chris and I didn’t dawdle. We quickly crossed back over the knife edge and descended down toward the ridge leading up to Huerfano Peak. Since I was going to be near another land feature named for Albert Ellingwood, I once again brought my copy of Albert Ellingwood: Scholar of Summits by Jeff Arnold. When we were about half-way to Huerfano’s summit, I stopped and asked Chris to take a photo of me with it with Blanca Peak and Ellingwood Point behind me. In the photo to the left, you can almost see the entirety of Gash Ridge, the Class 5.4 southeast ridge route to the summit of Blanca Peak. In the photo to theThe week before, I took the book with me to the summit of Crestone Needle and did the same (Ellingwood has a route up the Needle named after him). It really doesn’t mean a lot, but I do have a published photo in the book (page 22), so it’s a novelty to me.

The rest of the way up Huerfano Peak wasn’t really challenging other than the fact that we were both tired from having just climbed Lindsey and Iron Nipple. Once there, I found a PVC tube. There wasn’t a CMC register inside of it; someone left a few sheets of paper that were print-outs from Gerry Roach’s Colorado Fourteeners book. Chris and I signed the back of one of the sheets and placed everything back inside before taking a long-needed break.

Chris loungin’ around on Huerfano’s summit and his official summit shot

My obligatory summit shot

Back in June, I had dubbed California Peaks East Ridge “Two-Mile Ridge” due to the fact that it is right around two miles long. The ridge looked massive from Huerfano Peak.

360° panorama taken from the summit of Huerfano Peak

There wasn’t really any hint of weather on the summit, so we probably stayed there for a good twenty minutes while we rested and refueled. There was barely any wind and it felt nice and warm. Once we were rested enough, we began the long trek back to the Lindsey/Iron Nipple saddle. Chris asked if we could skirt Iron Nipple below it so we wouldn’t have to regain the elevation and I didn’t see why we couldn’t. The talus beneath it looked a little sketchy, but not impassable. Once underneath the Nipple, I spotted a boulder that was about to tip over and slide hundreds of feet down into the basin, so I quickly ran across the talus and held it up long enough for all the hikers below to get out of the way! Actually, it was just leaning and I highly doubt there was anyone on that side of the mountain. The boulder had probably been in that position for a long time, too, but it made for a goofy photo opp.

Chris and I hiked back up to the green, grassy saddle just beneath Iron Nipple on the other side and took a brief respite before descending down to the saddle the way we spotted the hikers doing it from. It was actually the easier way around, but the other side was more interesting! We quickly hiked down from the saddle and into the basin below. By that time, there were dark clouds rolling-in from the west. It felt like weather was approaching. We had already been on the trail for over eight hours and were fortunate enough not to have encountered inclement weather, but were pushing our luck. We needed to get back down to the trailhead expeditiously.

Colorado has had an unusually wet summer this year. As a result, there have been mushrooms growing EVERYWHERE. The trail to Lindsey was littered with them. Chris and I didn’t notice hardly any on the way up because it was dark, but were seeing them all over the place on our way down. Along the trail next to Nipple Creek, I spotted a humongous growth of mushrooms that I couldn’t help stopping for. I’m not sure how to identify the species, but it appeared that four or five of them had grown together into a giant cairn-like mushroom. It was actually pretty cool. I had to put my left hand over it to be able to illustrate how large it was. On my way up to Capitol Peak with Brian and Brad, we spotted some really colorful mushrooms that I neglected to take photos of, but they reminded us of the 1-UP mushrooms from Super Mario Brothers.

Chris and I found some logs to cross over Huerfano River and walked over it without incident. I felt random sprinkles of rain on me and quickened my pace. We crossed an open meadow, took one last look back at Blanca, and returned to the trailhead at around 2:00. While we were there, the sky opened up on us and it really started raining at a good clip. Some hikers had just arrived at the trailhead and were about to hit the trail, but I’m not sure how far they were going to get in the rain. We drove through a heavy thunderstorm on our way back out to Gardner. From there, we headed south into Westcliffe. Chris’ neighbors gave him an envelope with some of their dog’s ashes they they wanted to have scattered somewhere in Westcliffe. I took him to a city park that I knew of and he scattered Annabelle Starr’s ashes to the wind. Afterward, we had pizza at a local eatery, then returned home.

This trip had the unfortunately distinction of being the last one I took before being laid-off by my employer. After over five years of employment there, they decided to close operations here in Colorado Springs and my position was eliminated. Hopefully, I’ll be able to find new employment soon.

GPS stats taken from our trip up Mt. Lindsey, Iron Nipple, and Huerfano Peak

Google Earth .KML file of my route (right-click and “save target as” to save the file). NOTE: For some reason, if you’re using Internet Explorer, when you “save target as”, it changes the file extension to .XML. This is incorrect. To be able to view this in Google Earth, change the file extension to .KML before saving the file. It downloads correctly in Firefox.

Comments (0)

By Terry, August 21, 2010 10:44 pm

Jodi looking back at Crestone Needle (14,197 ft.) at sunrise

GPS and elevation profile of our route up Crestone Needle

Google Earth profile

When I climbed Crestone Needle last summer, I knew it wasn’t going to be the last time I’d climb it. Of all of Colorado’s 14ers that I’ve hike/climbed thus far, it is my favorite scramble. There’s something about the distinctive rocky, multi-colored knobs that are a part of the conglomerate rock that makes up much of the Crestone Group so much fun! Before I had a number of Class 3 and Class 4 climbs under my belt, I was very intimidated by the Needle. Now that I consider myself a bit more experienced, I figured that it would be nice to see how much my scrambling skills and confidence had improved.

The first time I met Jodi was back in April at the 14ers.com Spring Gathering. A few weeks later, we made plans with another member, Sandy, and hiked up Humboldt Peak as a snow ascent. Since then, Jodi and I have kept in touch and met-up a couple of times for drinks and/or meals. Once, she drove up to Colorado Springs for a meeting and I took her downtown to a Mexican restaurant. A week later, after my failed attempt at climbing Kit Carson Peak’s north ridge (I was spooked off by the weather), I stopped through Cañon City and had lunch with her. Needless to say, Jodi’s one of the coolest women that I know. When I decided early in the week that I wanted to climb Crestone Needle again, I looked to her as a climbing partner. I knew she was capable; she had climbed Crestone Peak earlier in the summer. My choice of peaks provided me an opportunity to enjoy her company once again.

I picked Jodi up at her house at 2:30 AM and we drove through Westcliffe to the South Colony Lakes trailhead. We were on the trail at 4:00. I had originally wanted to start out a little earlier, but came to a painful realization that the sun is rising later in the morning as we approach Autumn. I didn’t want to have us climbing up Broken Hand Pass in the dark, so told Jodi we should probably leave a little later. The South Colony Lakes trailhead used to be a couple of miles further up the road, but the Forest Service closed that trailhead and moved it to its new location due to damage being done to the road by vehicles. When I summited Humboldt Peak for the first time, I started my hike from that old trailhead and it made the trip a lot shorter. Adding another five miles to the round-trip total was going to be interesting.

With our headlamps blaring, Jodi and I crossed a very new log bridge, signed-in at the register, and began making our way up the dark road. Hiking on it wasn’t difficult; it was just long and tedious. We enjoyed our conversation which helped pass the time. It seemed like it took us a little over an hour to reach the old trailhead at our leisurely pace. We crossed another bridge over a creek and found our way to a familiar gate. Above us, we could see the outline of Crestone Needle and Broken Hand Peak. The road continued past the gate, but eventually turned into more of a trail. I remembered from my last trip to this area that the campsites near the South Colony Lakes was not too far away. We entered the tree canopy and gained a little bit of elevation before encountering campsites. Coming to a wooden sign that read “Crestone Needle Standard Route”, we turned left and began our ascent of Broken Hand Pass.

From the trail turn-off, we began to gain elevation pretty quickly. As the eastern horizon was lightening, I saw lower South Colony Lake below us to the right. When we were high enough on the trail, we stopped to watch the sun rise over the Wet Mountains to the east. Our view of sunrise was unobstructed and beautiful. Having experienced sunrise in this area a few years ago, I knew that the Needle was soon going to be bathed in a rich, red hue. We marveled at the changing color of light as the sun rose for a few minutes before continuing on. I had never been up Broken Hand Pass from this side; when Matt and I climbed the Crestones last year, we did it from the other side via the Cottonwood Creek trailhead (with permission from the Manitou Foundation). I heard that it contained a lot of loose soil and rocks and was generally not enjoyable to climb (it has a few short Class 3 sections). I wasn’t looking forward to it — and neither was Jodi.

a few weeks prior to our climb, a couple from Texas died while trying to climb the Ellingwood Arête on Crestone Needle. They were caught in a torrential downpour and were washed right off the side of the mountain. It was another sad tragedy in what has been a deadly summer in the mountaineering community. The same storm damaged the trail up Broken Hand Pass, washing out a portion of it. As we started getting higher and approaching sketchy rock, we stopped to don our helmets. I gave Jodi my compact camera and asked her to take some photos for me. The trail damage from the rainstorm that killed the two climbers was deep and very obvious; it looked like a couple of huge boulders slid right down the mountain. Jodi and I gingerly crossed the damaged portion of the trail before scrambling up some pretty solid rock. On top of the pass, I counted at least five people that I could see. I had no idea of how many people were truly up there. Above the short scramble, we found the trail again and found our way up to the top of Broken Hand Pass.

Looking back down Broken Hand Pass. Lower South Colony Lake is visible (photo courtesy of Jodi)

The wind was blowing pretty strongly at the top of the pass. Jodi decided to put on her fleece before we continued on. From there, the trail was familiar to me having climbed the Needle last summer. We needed to traverse to the northwest toward the base of the East Gully and then ascend it. To keep the climb at Class 3, we then needed to traverse over to the West Gully and climb to the summit from there.

Crestone Needle seen from the approach to the East Gully

Jodi and Humboldt Peak on our way to the base of the East Gully

A photo of me on the approach to the East Gully

Looking up Crestone Needle’s East Gully

Jodi and I made short work of the traverse from Broken Hand Pass to the base of the East Gully. There were a couple of short Class 3 scrambles along the way, but nothing major. When we reached the base of the East Gully, we stopped for a short rest before beginning our ascent of the Needle. Once rested, I took the lead and started climbing the knobby conglomerate rock. Not to be outdone, Jodi ascended quickly behind me and looked like a pro! I thoroughly enjoyed that portion of the climb. The tricky part was going to be finding the crossover point to the West Gully. If I had been with Jerry or Brian, I probably would have wanted to ascend the entire East Gully, but past the crossover area it forms a Class 4 dihedral which I didn’t think Jodi would be comfortable climbing, so I wanted to keep our climb at Class 3.

Jodi and I reached the crossover point and traversed into the West Gully. Upon entering it, I spotted something peculiar. Someone had placed a white trash bag under a rock. I thought this sort of odd, but we paid scant attention to it and moved on. The climb up the West Gully was a little bit steeper than what we had encountered on the east side, but all of the rock was solid and fun to scramble up. All along the way, we heard voices — loud voices — but couldn’t figure out how many people were ahead of us. Jodi heard someone exclaim, “God, this sucks!” at one point when we were in the East Gully. Apparently, someone not too experienced among them.

A few shots looking up the West Gully during our ascent

When we were getting pretty close to the top of the West Gully, a few climbers began their descent. We were immediately informed that there were about twenty Texans on the summit. Great. Not only were we going to have to share the summit with all of those people, but the group was mostly inexperienced. I told Jodi that we were going to be spending at least an hour on the summit after they left it to allow them enough time to get down. When we reached the top of the gully, I found another white trash bag under a rock. Really? This one annoyed me because if I attempted to take a summit panorama while the Texans were on top, it would be a part of it. Grrr. Behind us was another couple who were about to summit as well. I gave them a heads-up about what we were about to encounter. Jodi and I walked over to the summit past the Texans and went to the far west side of it to find a place to rest. Fortunately, the Texans were about to start their descent. We only ended up sharing the summit with them for five minutes or so. Thank goodness. They were being pretty loud.

Once the crowd was dispatched, Jodi and I settled down with the other two climbers and enjoyed the summit to ourselves. I looked over at Crestone Peak; Jerry was supposed to be attempting the Peak-to-Needle traverse, but I didn’t know how long it was going to take him to complete it. He invited me to join him, but I didn’t think that Jodi was going to be up to attempting something that technical. When I mentioned Jerry’s intent to Jodi, she commented that she would like to meet him sometime. To my surprise, one of the two people we were sharing the summit asked, “Oh, do you know Jerry?” When I told him that Jerry has been my climbing partner for most of the summer, he asked, “Are you Terry Mathews? You did that northwest ridge route on Little Bear, didn’t you?” It was a bit of a shock to me that someone knew who I was. Apparently, the climbers (a man and his wife) had met Jerry at the campground near lower South Colony Lake.

The couple also informed Jodi and me that there were about fifty-five Texans altogether that were camped down there. They drove up and hiked to the campground on Thursday, then hiked up Humboldt Peak on Saturday. They were apparently on some kind of endurance trip or something. A bunch of them vomited on the way up Humboldt; there was a little bit of vomit on the summit of the Needle with us as well. It was not the most intelligent thing that I’ve ever seen done. The woman also said that they were up all night yelling across the campground to each other and that she caught a lot of them cutting down live trees to use as firewood. It’s people like this who end up giving people from their state a bad reputation up here. They just don’t have any respect for other campers or leaving the environment in the same condition it was in when they arrived.

Panorama taken from the summit of Crestone Needle

While we all sat and refueled for about fifteen minutes, I saw someone scrambling up the west side of the summit. It was Jerry! He was with another climber, Mark, whom he had met on the way up the Peak. We all greeted Jerry and I introduced him to Jodi. When I told him who he just missed, Jerry confirmed that they, indeed, kept him up into the night as well. Our summit mates left after about twenty minutes or so and bade us a fond farewell. The rest of us must’ve talked for an additional twenty minutes or so before deciding that we had allowed the Texans enough time to get far ahead of us. Before departing, though, I wanted a couple summit shots.

Jodi on the summit of Crestone Needle

Here I am holding my copy of Albert Ellingwood: Scholar of Summits by Jeff Arnold. Earlier this year, Jeff contacted me and asked permission to use one of my photos of Ellingwood Point in his book. My photo is on page 22 of his book!

Mark, Jerry, Jodi, and I began our descent of the Needle down the West Gully. We didn’t descend down quite far enough and traversed over into the East Gully too soon. Rather than crossing back over to the West Gully again, we decided to down climb the Class 4 rock. I didn’t know how much Class 4 experience Jodi had, but she handled it quite admirably. She asked me to stay close to her so I could spot her foot placements, which I gladly did. There was a fun dihedral that we had to stem our legs across to climb down. It was a blast! Jodi looked like she was having a lot of fun. I certainly did! I caught quite a few photos of her down climbing.

We eventually got back down to the Class 3 portion of the East Gully. Instead of down climbing back to the trail, we decided to traverse over to the east a little further and climbed down. It was an unfamiliar route to me, but we had all of the same kind of knobs and rocks to descend on, so it ended up being a lot of fun. Right at the end, there was a bit of a gap to leap over. I stood on the edge of the rock and leaped over the gap onto the rock below me. Jodi was uncomfortable doing the same and managed to climb down and jumping over the gap from a lower angle. Upon doing so, she hopped once and threw her hands up in the air. “I give that dismount an 8,” I said.

“Yeah, there was a bit of a hop right there at the end, wasn’t there?” she replied. We laughed and continued to descend to Broken Hand Pass.

The wind was still whipping at Broken Hand Pass. When we started descending down toward lower South Colony Lake, they dissipated a bit. Jerry and Mark went ahead of us. At one point, Jerry climbed atop a small spire and I took a photo of him with Humboldt Peak in the background. Once we were all past the Class 3 climbing the trail deteriorated, so we had to take it a little slower to avoid slipping or sending a rock slide down below us. Finally, we got onto more-stable rock and I stopped to take off my helmet. While I did, I looked down and saw some sort of fossilized plant. It was pretty cool, so I took a photo of it. Jodi joined me soon afterward and I pointed it out to her. It was a day of discovery!

Jerry and Mark had pulled way ahead of Jodi and me. By the time we reached Jerry’s campsite, Mark had already left for the trailhead. Jerry asked if we were going to wait for him or head back. We weren’t in a hurry, so we helped Jerry pack up a little and together we headed back to the trailhead. Jerry just completed seven 14ers after being on vacation for seven days, so he was tired and ready to get back home. The hike back to the trailhead was long, hot, and arduous. We passed several backpackers on the way down and warned them of the fifty-five Texans at the lake, but Jerry thought they were going to be on their way out that day, too. We arrived back at the trailhead and Jerry gave another hiker a ride down to the lower trailhead while Jodi and I unwound for a few minutes. Before long, we were back on the road, ourselves. We met Jerry at the lower trailhead and decided to head into Westcliffe together for a bite to eat.

Westcliffe had some sort of celebration going on. We asked about the big tent on the west side of town, but after talking to a couple of locals, we found out that they would charge us $15 to get in. I asked if there was a place to get pizza at and was told of a geodesic dome in Silver Cliff that served good pizza. Jodi, Jerry, and I went there and ordered a few personal-sized pizzas, enjoyed some drinks, and good conversation. After dinner, we bade Jerry a fond farewell and I took Jodi home to Cañon City before heading home, myself. I hope I get to climb with her again in the near future!

GPS stats taken from our climb up Crestone Needle

Google Earth .KML file of my route (right-click and “save target as” to save the file). NOTE: For some reason, if you’re using Internet Explorer, when you “save target as”, it changes the file extension to .XML. This is incorrect. To be able to view this in Google Earth, change the file extension to .KML before saving the file. It downloads correctly in Firefox.

[Show as slideshow]

[View with PicLens]

12345►