Crestone Peak May 2022 this is my last one in the Sangre de Cristo range, I had been saving this one to do the traverse from Crestone Peak to Crestone Needle. We finally had a break in the weather today, the past month has been crazy winds. I drove in from Colorado Springs that morning and made it up to the 4WD lot in my truck. The road is pretty rugged, with lots of rocks and uneven terrain, there are at least 3 or 4 obstacles that you need to pick a good line so you don't scrape the bottom of your car, took me a little over 30 minutes to cover the road that is shy of 3 miles in length. I started later than I wanted to at 6:00am by then sun was already out. There were hundreds if not thousands of down trees on the road to the old trailhead and even all the way up to the treeline. The down trees slowed me down a good bit, making the snow softer and softer every passing minute which had me concerned. There was snow on the upper sections of the broken hand pass luckily was still hard icy on my way in, but needed crampons and an ice axe to make it through this class 3 section. On the other side of the broken hand pass was free of snow. Then climbed down and around Cottonwood lake to get my first view of the Red Gully that was still holding snow and ice on the upper sections. Once on the Red Gully the snow and ice present were starting to melt and you could hear the running water under the snow, this made the climb a lot more difficult and avoiding snow and ice I got off route and into some difficult class 4/5 moves. Made it to the summit of Crestone Peak at 10:20 am with perfect weather at the top, but the snow was deteriorating fast on the gully so didn't spend too much time on the summit and headed back down right away. I had intended to traverse to Crestone Needle, but by now the snow was melting, and didn't know how the rest of the traverse would be and I had to be back in the springs by 4:30pm for my daughter's school play so I decided not to do the traverse, I will have to return here on another occasion. This proved to be a good decision in the end because the snow was really rotted on the way down I barely made it through the difficult section before I started post-holing really bad. Made back down to my car at 2:00pm just in time to make it to my daughter's play in Colorado Springs at 4:30pm.
Негізгі бет CRESTONE PEAK 14,294 FT
Пікірлер: 29