Crestone Peak - 14294' - North Buttress class 4
September 2019
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Marcus, an old friend from while I was in college at Mines who also happened to be in Golden at the time agreed to climb Crestone Peak with me. Since I had access to a 4WD vehicle, I figured it was finally time to do the peak. I had been putting it off for years as I did not want to walk that long road again. After some research on route options, I discovered the North Pillar route is not feasible to summit, therefore we decided to forgo all the heavy climbing gear and simply go for the north buttress, a class 4 scramble. We could then descend down the standard red gully route and complete a full Tour de Crestone Peak! We left Golden the night before and crashed along the road through the Wet Mountains before it drops into Westcliffe. I slept in the bed of the truck but the wind kept me awake for a while. By about 7:30am we completed the slow drive up the South Colony Road to the gate, passing roughly 40 cars parked at the lowest lot in the valley floor. We were in for a busy day that was for sure.
The trail up to upper South Colony Lake was scenic and quick. Within an 90 minutes we were at the junction with the trail that heads up and to the right for Humboldt Peak. We however continued straight ahead continuing up the valley past the lake towards the impressive steep north face of the Crestone Peaks. We continued all the way until we reached a small notch in the north buttress, which extends all around the head of this valley eventually connecting to Bears Playground.It was easy class 2 and 3 scrambling up a loose gully for the final 300 feet or so to this notch, at which point the full grandeur of Crestone Peaks' north face was seen. The NW couloir off to the right a short ways past the buttress was mostly dry and looked filled with loose rocks. Luckily we were continuing straight up the buttress, which initially was a simply class 2 walk up past the tops of the North Pillar and other pillars that dropped very steeply into the South Colony drainage to the east. The route past these pillars on the buttress to the west was easy though. We hit our first real scrambling on the final 200 feet to the north peak (the other false summit). Some fun class 3 climbing brought us atop a perch that onlooks both the east and west peaks (of which the west peak is the true summit). The crux of the route followed, as we had to carefully downclimb to the notch and make a very exposed traverse on the west facing face to reach the infamous saddle between the east and west peaks. This took us some time as we had to backtrack a couple times to find the best way, not to mention the rock was cold being in the shade. There were already a bunch of people on the summit and I am sure they thought we were goats! We reached the saddle and finished the last couple hundred feet to the summit where we were greeted by about 10 people. This was the busiest summit I have ever been on since Union Peak during he August 2017 solar eclipse.
The trail up to upper South Colony Lake was scenic and quick. Within an 90 minutes we were at the junction with the trail that heads up and to the right for Humboldt Peak. We however continued straight ahead continuing up the valley past the lake towards the impressive steep north face of the Crestone Peaks. We continued all the way until we reached a small notch in the north buttress, which extends all around the head of this valley eventually connecting to Bears Playground.It was easy class 2 and 3 scrambling up a loose gully for the final 300 feet or so to this notch, at which point the full grandeur of Crestone Peaks' north face was seen. The NW couloir off to the right a short ways past the buttress was mostly dry and looked filled with loose rocks. Luckily we were continuing straight up the buttress, which initially was a simply class 2 walk up past the tops of the North Pillar and other pillars that dropped very steeply into the South Colony drainage to the east. The route past these pillars on the buttress to the west was easy though. We hit our first real scrambling on the final 200 feet to the north peak (the other false summit). Some fun class 3 climbing brought us atop a perch that onlooks both the east and west peaks (of which the west peak is the true summit). The crux of the route followed, as we had to carefully downclimb to the notch and make a very exposed traverse on the west facing face to reach the infamous saddle between the east and west peaks. This took us some time as we had to backtrack a couple times to find the best way, not to mention the rock was cold being in the shade. There were already a bunch of people on the summit and I am sure they thought we were goats! We reached the saddle and finished the last couple hundred feet to the summit where we were greeted by about 10 people. This was the busiest summit I have ever been on since Union Peak during he August 2017 solar eclipse.
We then decided to also tag the east summit because it looked the same elevation. Even from the top of that one we still couldn't determine which was higher. We started the descent down the standard route via the red gully, and caught up and past everyone else heading down. There were even a few other still headed up. The Cottonwood valley is absolutely stunning I will say, and it was still very green for being so late in the summer. It totally blew my mind! The lake was also perfect, and featured crystal clear water with lush green grass surrounding it. If it were just a bit warmer I would have gone swimming. The second crux of the day was making the hike back up to Broken Hand Pass. Marcus considered also running up Crestone Needle while I would go do Broken Hand Peak, but we both in the end just decided to hike back. It was an uneventful hike back to the truck.
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