One of many
trip reports under the
SilGro home page for Alan Silverstein and Cathie
Grow.
Email me at
ajs@frii.com.
Last update: April 1, 2024
(Previous trip report: 1988_0618_MountBierstadt.htm)
(A
Fourteener
trip report.)
This is the first of a series of five trip reports on my Great Escape this summer, to the Sangre de Cristo Range and San Juan Range in Colorado. June 30 through July 9 I climbed seven peaks, including six Fourteeners, on five climbing days, and gained over 16,300 vertical feet. I spent nine consecutive nights camping out, hence less than $200 in direct expenses, and drove Triceratops, my 1973 Jeep Wagoneer, over 1000 miles, much of it in 4WD. I enjoyed one cold, dewy night at 14150', and witnessed a second fabulous sunrise after one grind of a night climb.
For some strange reason I enjoyed revisiting Colorado Fourteeners. I'd now been up 18 of them a second time.
Thursday-Friday, June 30 - July 1:
Thursday after work I drove down to Walsenburg alone in about 4.5 hours. I found a camp site in Lathrop State Park off US 160 just west of town, fairly late.
Friday: Early the next morning I continued west and then north to meet Paul and Carolyn Beiser at 0900. We joined up on the rocky road to Lake Como, at the point where it turned 4WD. This was 3.3 miles north of the 160/150 junction and 2.1 miles east of the pavement, across a cattle guard on a now-unmarked road.
The Lake Como road was frightening. It was awful because nobody maintained it. I took it pretty slow, but still had to stop twice to reattach the shift linkage to the transmission! Fortunately Jeeps are easy to work on, and the Beisers were patient...
As the road climbed, the view west and down to the San Luis Valley became increasingly spectacular. After 2:05 and 3.9 miles more we reached some old ruins at about 10400'. Here a lot of bare, jutting rock blocked the road pretty effectively, unless you had a narrow wheelbase and lots of guts. We parked the Jeep (grin).
The Beisers went on ahead while I spent a couple of hours putting together a backpack -- I really had hoped to drive all the way to Lake Como -- and chatted with some camp kids who'd driven up from New Mexico.
My pack must have weighed 60 pounds. It was my first time with a new, spacious, comfortable backpack, and I thought it was only half a mile more to the lake, so I tossed in a lot of junk without careful planning... Sigh. It turned out to be more like two miles (I still don't know exactly how far it was). We gained ~1560' to a lovely campsite above the Lake Como, where the trees thinned out, at 11960'. It took me from 1310 to 1520 to go the distance. We had a pleasant evening.
Saturday morning, July 2, dawned quite cold, being it was early July, so we were slow to get going. We followed the trail up at 0650 [apparently back then I thought this was a late start!], deep in shadow, surrounded by peaks catching early sunlight. The jeep road tapered into a very good trail that continued quite a long way, though you couldn't see it from below. We didn't leave it, to scramble directly for Blanca Peak, until well above Crater Lake -- still frozen over, in icy blue stillness, a huge boulder parked in it.
The scrambling straight north to Blanca Peak above the lake was pretty decent, as I remembered from last time. We made the summit at 0935; 2:45 to climb 2400'. The peak was small and steep on all sides, with a very nice view.
Mount Hamilton, a foothill to the south, blocked some of that direction. Awesome Little Bear Peak stood before the distant San Juans and the San Luis Valley 6000' below to the southwest. With binoculars I made out Uncompahgre Peak, 113 miles away! The Sand Dunes were hidden by Ellingwood Point, but the Crestones and Pikes Peak were quite visible to the north and northeast. Huerfano Valley and Mount Lindsey completed the panorama to the east. On the summit remained a lot of graffiti scratched into the rocks, some from 1909.
After an hour -- not long enough -- we departed down the north ridge toward Ellingwood Point. Little cumulus clouds formed in thermals to the east, a sign of weather to come. The ridge down was lots of fun, with sheer 2000' cliffs to the right and steep rock to the left, yet lots of room to descend easily. We reached the 13680' saddle at 1110.
There was a relatively easy cairned route that dropped about 100' more to get around steep rock past the saddle. We followed this down, then rejoined the ridge up to Ellingwood Point at 1150; 1:18 from Blanca Peak, with a gain of about 460'. Like Blanca, Ellingwood was rather small and had a very nice view -- especially of the north face of Blanca, which appeared unassailably steep!
Once on the second peak we would have liked to spend several hours. But by now towering cumulus were well formed, so we left at 1225. Just for fun we followed the southwest ridge off the summit. From Blanca it appeared much easier and less exposed than was actually the case. Lots of fun! But slow. So before long we headed straight down the steep slope from about 13600' towards Crater Lake, carefully picking a doable route. This too had its "moments".
I reached the lake at 1350 and spent some time enjoying it and circling its south side while the Beisers went straight back to camp. I crossed a saddle with a great view, south of the 12840' knob, and rejoined the trail. It started to drizzle and get real dark to the west. Just after I reached camp at 1515, the skies opened up -- talk about timing. We spent several hours resting in our tents before coming out for dinner and a mellow cold evening.
The next day we climbed Little Bear Peak!
(Next trip report: 1988_0703_LittleBearPeak.htm)