Crestone Peak

Above is a pretty good panoramic shot of one of the prettiest places in Colorado taken from the top of Crestone Peak. On the far left in the distance is Humbolt peak which we summited in 2002. On the right side of the first frame is Crestone Needle which is a 14er that we have not completed at this time. Near the center of the second frame out in the distance are the GSD. The last frame shows Kit Carson and Kat Carson to the North. They were completed later in 2004. For this trip we decided to aproach Crestone from the West and not to stay over night which we knew would make for a long day. We left Denver about 1:30am and drove to the town of Crestone and then up to the Cottonwood Creek trailhead. We started hiking around 5am, well before the sun came up because we knew it would be a long hike. The starting elevation was around 8000ft, so we knew we had alot of verticle to do as well. The hike up the valley is long and beautiful. There are some great waterfalls and as you get closer to treeline the terrain gets very rocky and terraced. Below to the right is a shot of me hiking past one of the waterfalls in this area. Once we made treeline, it was difficult to discern a trail so we kept going up. Somehow we got going to the North and ended up on the wrong side of Crestone. Once we figured out where we were, we hiked back around the mountain trying not to loose much altitude. We probably lost an hour and a half of time during this little adventure. Below is a shot of Crash while we were trying to figure out where to go.

Below is a Summit shot from Crestone Peak, and to the right is a shot of me walking along a norrow passageway trying to get around to the place where we will need to ascend without loosing too much altitude. Crestone Needle is the peak on the right side of that picture. We are heading to the left to get to Crestone Peak.

In the left pic, I am in the center of the picture just about to scramble up the last few feet to the summit. Above is a shot of Crash as he peaks his head over the false summit to see he only has a few feet to go. Once we corrected our error and got back on track, it was already after noon. Then when we hit the couloir that we needed to ascend and the progress became very slow. There is plenty of class III (hand and foot) climbing in this section with a few places that you have to pull youself up over a ledge with a lot of exposure. We finally gained the saddle between Crestones East and West peaks and headed up to the top. The pic above shows what the terrain was like here. We didnt spend much time at the top, just took a few pics and started the climb down. At least the weather was great this day which made the long hike seem a lttle easier. The shot to the right is loking back down onto Cottonwood Creek, and the pic below is walking along the creek during our descent. The shot below shows Crestone Needle to the East and a great waterfall in the foreground as we head back into the valley below treeline (heading west). It was a long hike out and a few hours were after dark. We made it back to the car just before 10pm (17 hours of hiking) and then had to drive all the way back to Denver. We were both so exhausted that we had to take turns driving. It was 1am before we got back to Denver making it a 24 hour round trip.