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Even after a tough time on Crestone Peak the previous Saturday, I still had the Sangre fever, and wanted to try a peak from the Willow Creek trail. I dragged my friend Clay along for the long drive to the town of Crestone. We started up the trail inundated by hungry mosquitoes, and to date I had never been surrounded by so many of them. Clay was feeling a bit under the weather, so we took it slow up to the lake. The approach was most mystical and scenic (photo on left). We were in for a tough day of 5,200' elevation gain. The last stretch of steep terrain at the top the headwall was snow-covered in spots, but very easy to maneuver around on the talus. The waterfall at the lake was quite a site to behold. The traverse around the lake would have been easier if I would have tried to look for the lower trail, but we did it the dumb way.
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At the base of the standard route, the snow was too soft to make a reasonable attempt at the Kirk Couloir, and another hiker mentioned that the traverse on Kit Carson Avenue was impassible due to the snowdrifts. The route looked nasty from Crestone Peak the week before, so our options were pretty limited. We started up the slope to Challenger Point at around noon - quite late indeed, but the weather showed no signs of turning bad (photo on left). We cramponed a 400' section to get some practice in and intersected the trail leading up the grass ledges. The slope was steep and long with a lot of loose material. We didn't run into anything that could have been avoided using class 2 hiking, but just to mix things up a bit and save time, I went up several small cliffy sections. We ran into a group from Tucson en route to the ridge who were a fun crowd.
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There were some small snowfields that were hardly noticeable along the path, which to this point had been somewhat arbitrary (photo on right). After an hour of slogging up the talus, grass, and scree, the route choices became limited, and the true route revealed itself. Another group was returning down Challenger just at the point where trail became visible again. A short traverse East on the trail leading out of the slope and toward the ridge was the only exit. A few quick scrambling moves, and a reprieve from the slope was attained on the ridge. The view from the basin below is misleading, as the summit ridge of Challenger Point is not visible, but a small section of ridge to the West is. It took a while to reach a point on the ridge high enough to see the true summit quite a distance off to the East (had I bothered to study the topo prior to being on the summit, I might have expected this). |  |
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And so the 2+ sections began (photo on left). There was an interesting section that looked like constructed trail, but actually was just a foot-worn path over the solid slope of conglomerate. This is possibly the crux of the route. Meandering over ridges and troughs led to class 2 ridge walking. Crestone Peak came into view with its dramatic Northwest Face, which looked a lot more melted out than Dwight Sunwall's photos of the route only a week previous. I could see several taunting people moving onto and off of Kit Carson's summit, having ascended from the East. I was slightly envious that my choice of route did not allow a summit bid. After a few short breaks, a final pitch was all that was separating me from the summit. |
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Then I took a moment to read the memorial plaque and contemplate its relevance on a fourteen thousand-foot summit. The group from Tucson made the descent to Kit Carson Avenue to inspect its conditions, and returned shortly after disappearing around the South side, verifying my assumptions and the testimonial of the climber we ran into at the base of the slope. The descent was uneventful and when our second round of mosquito invasion was over, driving on the highway was a nice transition to a good night's rest. I later learned that two climbers who passed us early on the trail were involved in a fatal accident. A CMC instructor, Tom Gibb was killed by rockfall on the North Face of Kit Carson.
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