Kit Carson North Ridge, Challenger
A fun scramble variation on what would normally be a slog of a route. My first taste of bomber Crestone Conglomerate rock!
You can trace the arc that is the north ridge of Kit Carson Peak
Looking up at the ridge proper - very knobby and secure, great scrambling
Rock walls of the neighboring Columbia Point
There is a taller non-volcanic Mount Adams in Colorado!
Just shy of 14000 feet thankfully otherwise this would have been a looong day.
Looking at Columbia Point again with the Crestone Peak and Needle slightly right
The prominent NW couloir of Crestone Peak
Sand dunes!
Waterfall feeding into Willow Lake
Notes
- This was probably ~14 miles and ~5500 feet of vertical gain in a little over 7 ½ hours.
- This was the worst mosquito experience I’ve ever had and it’s not even close. I briefly opened my car door at the trailhead the night before and a ton of them flooded my car instantly, and I had to drive back on the main road to flush them out. I still had to exterminate about a dozen of them inside the car that night regardless. Barely stopped the entire day and the mosquitoes followed me to the base of the climb. I learned later that the Sangre de Cristo Mountains are notorious for mosquitos in the summer.
- There are a couple ways that people get to the north ridge proper but I went up the gully feature which is prone to rockfall and was probably the hardest slabby climb of the outing.