Kit Carson

We knew this was going to be a long difficult hike, but I think it surpassed our expectations on both accounts. Kit carson is down in the crestone area and is not very close to any roads. We stayed in Westcliffe friday night and went to a great Irish bar named 'Poag Mahoneys'. We got to the first trailhead about 7am. We had hiked this road before while doing Humbolt, and knew that it was five and a half miles to the real trailhead. I was able to drive three and a half of those miles in my Rodeo before we had to stop. So it was a couple of mile hike to the trailhead and another couple of miles to South Colony Lakes. The lower lake is pictured above, one shot looking down on it from above and the other is looking accross the lake at broken hand pass. Broken hand pass leads to Crestone Needle which is the only 14er in that area which I have not summited. Once we reached the saddle above the lakes we hiked along a very rocky and slightly exposed ridge to a place called 'bears playground' which is a plateau at about 13200 ft. The pic to the left shows me walking across Bears playground with Kat Carson in the background.

After hiking across the 'playground' and around a 13700ft peak, we made it to Kat Carson which we would have to go over to get to our destination (Kit Carson). The weather was constantly changeing from clear to very cloudy all day, but our GPS was telling us that the barometric pressure was continuing to rise, so we pushed on hoping it would clear. The GPS came in handy for predicting distances too, as much of this hike has obstructed views even when the sky was clear. When the clouds rolled in it was sometimes difficult to see 50 feet. Kat Carson is 13980ft, so its only 20 ft shy of being a 14er itself, and its pretty steep to say the least. To the right is a shot of myself on the eastern most peak of Kat Carson where we were above the clouds. Below is a shot of the Eastern slope of Kat Carson which is exactly what we had to climb up. I am on the ridge depicted by the red circle, so you can see its a pretty good climb. The other pic is a great shot of all the peaks in this area. This was taken from the Eastern slope of Kit Carson, looking back at Kat Carson which we had just downclimbed (more on that in a minute) and then Humbolt and the Crestones in the distance.

If you think the route up the Eastern slope of Kat Carson looks steep, you should see the downclimb on the West side. There is a pic to the left showing our hero (me) just about to start climbing down. Basicaly it is straight down about 350 ft with places where there is quite a bit of exposure. We came almost straight down the right side of the western face of Kat Carson in the pic above. There was one point just about in the center of the pic to the left that a rock broke leaving me with no hand holds for a few seconds, and it was pretty scary. After that I settled down and actually got through the rest of the downclimb fairly easily. Below is a summit shot and a pic looking West from near the summit. Climbing back up Kat Carson proved to be a little easier, mostly beacuse we already knew the route and knew what to stay away from. The hike back to and across bears playground seemed longer than on the way up as we were getting pretty weary and the sun was getting low. When we got back to where we could see the lakes I decided to take a direct route insdead of the way we had come because it would cut off about a mile and there seemed to be a pretty good trail. Well this turned out to be a terrible decision as the trail went away after about a quarter of a mile and left us with a long steep scree and talus field to navigate in the dark. I was able to reach to lake and then find a trail after about ten minutes of looking.

Once I found a trail I checked the GPS and found that I was right on our backtrack from the way up so I knew we were OK then (but still had 4 miles to hike). I told Steve that I had found the trail and waited for him to arrive. The trail is pretty good the rest of the way, but everything looks different in the dark. Once we got back below treeline there were places where the trail was hard to find, so the backtracking feature of the GPS came in handy several times as we just followed it and eventually (usually within 30 or 40 ft) found the trail again. We finally got back to the truck after midnight, and it took me an hour to drive back down that 4wd road. A long day, but a successful one!