Humboldt Peak, Crestones Traverse

2024-08-14

Knocking out the fourth and last of the so called Great Fourtneer Traverses, and my last outing in Colorado this year.

crestones-traverse-1.jpg Morning light on Crestone Needle

crestones-traverse-2.jpg Northern views from Humboldt Peak

crestones-traverse-3.jpg And southern views

crestones-traverse-4.jpg Crestone Needle left and Crestone Peak right. Clear view of the Fifty Classic Climb up Crestone Needle as well (Ellingwood Ledges).

crestones-traverse-5.jpg Climbing up the north buttress of the Crestone NE Peak. The scramble was a lot like the North Ridge of Kit Carson with bomber Crestone conglomerate rock.

crestones-traverse-6.jpg Sand dunes!

crestones-traverse-7.jpg I believe the true summit of Crestone NE Peak is the higher one pictured. The final 5.0 climb from that col felt featureless compared to the scramble just earlier, and the wet lichen made the whole thing feel kind of sketchy, with an audience to watch the whole thing.

crestones-traverse-8.jpg Now back on the well-trodden regular Peak to Needle traverse. Some strangers pulling the supposed 5.2 crux move, good ol’ Colorado 14ers!

Notes

  • This was probably ~21 miles and ~8200 feet of vertical gain since I started from the lower 2WD trailhead (a last f you from Colorado). Just shy of 12 hours to car to car.
  • The ridge from Humboldt to the large saddle/plateau north of Crestone Peak had slower terrain than expected, but very cool as the landscape was vast and seemed less traveled.
  • Highly recommend only doing the north buttress of the Crestone NE Peak when it is absolutely dry. The final slab doesn’t get any sunlight until later in the day, so wait for another full day of sunlight after wet conditions.

Unsolicited Thoughts on a Colorado Summer

I frequently contemplate what it’d be like to live in Colorado. I’m not tied to any single place in the American West, and the increased proximity to family and friends back home is certainly a real consideration compared to living on the West Coast. So when I got the opportunity to stay in Colorado (in the mountains particularly, then later Denver) for an extended period of time, I had to pounce on it - at least so I can put some of these questions to rest.

Warning: a lot of this sounds like disparagement, but will try to highlight the positives. This is a giant ramble because I think about this topic a lot and want to get it off my chest and in writing purely for myself. There might be a bit of CO vs WA comparison because I need to justify my reasons for choosing the latter in a moment of self-awareness and interest haha.

14ers and 14er Culture

I should mention that all of my peakbagging trips involved summitting 14ers, or peaks above 14000 feet. Sometimes I do feel like the Colorado 14ers are the figurative punching bag of alpinism/mountaineering culture whether it is warranted or not and however gatekeepy. People initially associate the difficulty or badassery of a mountain with its elevation, but this is a bit removed from the truth if you ask me.

Base to height, Colorado’s mountains are a bit smaller than what you’d find in other mountainous states like WA/MT/WY/UT/NV/CA; of course this depends on where you define the base. And most of the mountains here, even those with a great deal of raw vertical relief, are too gradual in rise to be interesting (with exceptions depending on the range).

When I look at at a list of mountains sorted by elevation in a country or state, I sometimes interpret it as where the highest base or plateau of the mountains start from is located, which is why mountains with both a high elevation + prominence are impressive to look at. I do enjoy scouring a map and doing research on a mountain’s elevation, prominence, isolation, jut(?), and other metrics to see how they might stack up in person. Of course there are other subjective factors for the appeal of any given mountain, including the wilderness factor that the 14er peaks lack since they are often quite crowded and off-trail travel does not really exist unless you really look for it.

Ultimately I think what Colorado needs is a hand-curated list of interesting/notable “classics” worth summitting, and could do well to move away from focusing exclusively on 14ers since that seems to steal the spotlight from other intriguing peaks (are we just going to ignore the Gore Range?). This is just how I feel with any peak lists, or anything else regarding completion in general - which is “Why?”. You should have your priorities thought through - everything is arbitrary, especially these elevation numbers; everything has opportunity cost, and time is so limited. I don’t think driving quite a ways to go up an uninspiring pile of choss (or paying $150 to do so in the case of Culebra Mountain) to round out a list has much value IN MY OPINION(!!!).

I do recall a 14ers.com forum post of a member who regretted doing San Luis Peak and other uninspiring hard-to-get to peaks when that time could have been better spent traveling to more interesting places or doing more worthwhile pursuits for that individual. I know this is all cliche but a reminder nonetheless. Anyways just do what you want to do, and go for the peaks list by all means!

Speaking of the 14ers.com forum, the 14er and Colorado hiking culture is enough of a factor to talk about but won’t rag on it too much. I just think it’s hard to spread information when a collective reaches a certain critical mass. At the time of writing the 14ers.com Facebook group has 76K members, Colorado 14ers 105K. In general, people seemed to be content with lower quality tools (w.r.t. mapping & weather), and 14ers.com is an adequate enough resource for most people for the things they’re doing.

This is not necessarily a bad thing, people have to start somewhere and Colorado is a great place to do just that and train. Tangent: I think CO is also a great place to start to learn skiing in the resort as well. All this to say that maybe I’m not quite the right audience for 14er content at this point in my life, but it’s still fun to read and indulge in from time to time (and I see other friends on the forums doing so too) (and it’s fun seeing trip reports of Coloradans going on Cascade adventures). Although the validation from strangers on my 14er linkups and the unnoteworthy speed at which I did them was quite the ego boost since I feel like I’m normally a bum in the Cascades haha.

The Best of Colorado’s 14ers and the Four Great Traverses

With opportunity cost in mind, I prioritized the best that the state had to offer during my short stay, which seemed to be the scrambly 14ers and the ones part of the Four Great Traverses, a set of semi-technical linkups between 14ers. I’d rank the traverses as such with a brief summary since I already wrote about them:

  1. Maroon Bells: The shortest but the best climbing of the bunch since it actually went vertical and I had to think about the moves instead of being on autopilot. I think these peaks are some of the coolest in Colorado, but bummer about the parking situation.
  2. Crestones: Since I took the north buttress variation to Crestone Peak, it was like also adding the scramble on the North Ridge of Kit Carson in addition to the traverse. So there were two sections of sustained secure class four scrambling on knobby rock which was fun. Not a fan of the extra miles on dirt road I had to do though.
  3. Little Bear Blanca: This is probably the only true ridge traverse of these. Sustained class 2-4, with the exposure not being as bad as reported in my opinion. I actually can’t remember too much about this, seeing as it didn’t imprint on my mind as heavily as the previous two. Perhaps due to very negative end in the peak-end rule with the road situation being a giant stain on the whole thing.
  4. El Diente Wilson: Just seemed like a generic linkup between two peaks, not boring but not special either. Not the best views either since these peaks are a little isolated from the more interesting parts of the San Juan range. The whole mining and road approach also put a bit of a stain on the outing too.

And my favorite individual 14ers:

  1. Capitol Peak: I took the ridge direct from the Daly saddle which added more scrambling, and the whole thing was fun + scenic the entire way and back.
  2. Kit Carson North Ridge: Very fun and sustained class four scrambling on knobby rock as mentioned earlier.
  3. Sneffels: A mediocre peak to hike in the summer, but the views of the San Juans were incredible.

I’d put the scrambles in the Maroon Bells, Crestones, LB-Blanca, Capitol, and Kit Carson as better than most things I’ve done in WA since they are sustained comparatively. While I suspect more peaks in the Cascades involve some scrambling, they are generally only at the summit block and usually quite brief (if not entirely technical). And if there are sustained technical routes to a summit, they are alpine climbs, but that’s a wash between between the two states with maybe an edge to CO (though I don’t have the expertise to speak on this). I speculate that if most of the mountains in Colorado form mellow ridges, you’re bound to end up with a couple that are quite fun on the jagged end of the spectrum, while most of the ridges in Washington are way too rugged and chossy to even be navigable in the first place.

I also prioritized getting on all of the sub-ranges in Colorado this trip to get the lay of the land. Here’s my quick uninformed rundown:

  • Rocky Mountain National Park (RMNP) + Indian Peaks Wilderness (IPW): Actually a good density of interesting terrain here and pretty close to Denver. I’d be spending most of my time here if I lived in Colorado.
  • Other Front Range/CO Springs/Summit County/Ten Mile/Mosquito Range: This is what I most associate with Colorado, the gentle choss piles that quickly become uninteresting. Okay views.
  • Sawatch Range: Same as the front range, mellow peaks and still a little boring, but quite big and fun to look at from the road. Huron seems to be the favorite mountain from popular consensus due to the views.
  • Gore Range/Holy Cross Wilderness: Actually seems to have the most interesting terrain in the Summit County area but I did not spend any time here.
  • Elks: There actually seems to be a lot of fun things outside of Capitol/Snowmass/Maroon/Pyramid. This would be the zone I’d come to if I lived in Summit County along with the Gores/HCW.
  • Sangre de Cristos: This seemed to me like a handful of interesting peaks in an otherwise uninteresting zone. Other than the rugged mountains of the Blanca and Crestone groups, the rest of the range is road eye candy but I can’t imagine is that much fun to go up. The views from the peak are eh.
  • San Juans: Finally, this is the holy land of Colorado, the place I’d live and actually would consider living in if the towns were a bit more developed (e.g. decent airport/hospital). Pretty sizable range with no shortage of beautiful peaks and terrain. I do hear Telluride Ski Resort + Silverton are the best ski areas in Colorado for this reason. I would have no reason to leave this range to go visit the Sawatch for example. Wish I got to spend more time here this trip, next time!

So from the Denver metro area, which is where one would most likely be living, there are actually a lot less compelling things to do from a mountaineering perspective (especially considering the acreage of the Rockies) unless you want to drive 3.5+ hours for my tastes. Whereas in WA there really seems to be an unending list of interesting things everytime I scroll to a new random area on CalTopo because of the density and complexity of the terrain in one big range.

Another thing I had to learn from boots on the ground experience is how much the lack of color and vegetation leads to the boringness of the mountains. The San Juans were pretty because of the green meadows, the flowers (seasonal admittedly), the green/blue lakes, and the different color of the rocks on the peaks. The peaks of the Sawatch/most of the Front Range seem a bit more dull in comparison, especially when there’s no interesting terrain to look at (unlike RMNP, e.g. Grays/Torreys/Cupid, Bierstadt, etc) and even more so without any snow cover.

So while people hate the 3-4 thousand feet of treeline slog with no-views in Washington, I do think about how it makes areas like the North Cascades so much prettier. It’s also an effective natural deterrent for crowds, and certainly adds to the remote/wilderness/difficulty factor.

That’s not to say you can’t increase the challenge or push yourself in these Colorado outings either. In fact, a cool coincidence that I noticed with all of the Great Fourteener Traverses is that all of them have a bonus third 14er you can tack on, but you had pay attention to the forecast because of the predictable yet unpredictable:

Weather

People love to brag about the state’s 300 days of sunshine per year (which itself is a questionable statement depending on definitions, and as a tangent a funny thing to say because it implies the lack of snow days for a state known for its skiing). Indeed, every summer weekend seems like there is a pretty good weather window just based on the ostensible sunshine in the forecast. And while I knew about the afternoon thunderstorms in much of the Rockies, I did not anticipate how much worse it is in Colorado compared to say, Utah. I’d need to do more research as to why this is. I know the midwest has a ton of tornado risk due to pressure systems and I imagine that has to relate with the CO Rockies bumping up against that.

Needless to say, the afternoon thunderstorms are an underrated day ruiner and can make planning quite hard. It’s predictable in the sense that you generally knew it was going to start around 12pm-2pm, but the exact time and severity was a bit unknown. Severe weather indices in the American/Canadian/European weather models were helpful however in gauging if it was worth getting out at all; a call back to the observation earlier on tools and what people are missing. But even on an average summer day, I felt like I was racing against the clock which is not a great feeling.

For longer outings like tacking on a third 14er on the Great Traverses, this meant getting to the top of the last peak before noon (sometimes 11 AM for me because I like to play it safe), which meant starting at 4 AM sometimes to cover say 10-15 miles with 7500-9000 feet of (sometimes technical) vertical gain in 7-8 hours.

I’ve also noticed that air quality on average is worse in Colorado though I didn’t check the hard data. While WA has spikes of bad AQI from summer wildfires, it doesn’t help that Denver sits east of the fires, mildly prone to inversions, and more exposed to ozone pollution.

Nuisances and Red Tape

People also like to talk about the mountain access in Colorado, maybe not in terms of drive time, but perhaps in the sense that there are so many trailheads and options for mountain adventures. I do think the mountain culture here is healthy because it’s so pervasive and in-your-face living here and that definitely seems to result in a lot of advocates doing good work in the form of public policy, trail work, trailhead maintenance, and the like.

One of my takeaways though was the necessity of a 4WD vehicle with good clearance, at least if you want to cheat the vert and mileage. There is even a page dedicated to road difficulty, and I can say getting up to Capitol Creek Trailhead (and even just attempting the start of Lake Como Road) was probably at my limit for how much I want to trust/abuse my stock RAV4. Because one can drive pretty high with vehicles, it did detract from the wilderness feel of the mountains.

So I always started at or near the 2WD trailhead, for the Blanca group, the Crestones, Sneffels, Wilsons, and would do the same for Antero, Princeton, DeCaLiBron, etc - and that pissed me off having to walk on a dirt road. I would grit my teeth anytime a vehicle would pass me, trying not to eat the ensuing dust cloud. Maybe it’s not too far of a joke that it’s a pay-to-win state. I pray that we all continue to start from the same trailhead in the Cascades.

And the reason I couldn’t do more around Ouray was due to the fact that some of these peaks are utterly inaccessible in the first place due to the rugged roads. See videos for Engineer Pass, Cinnamon Pass, and the Alpine Loop that connects Ouray/Silverton from the west to Lake City east of the San Juans.

I can’t be too mad since the roads are just a side effect of the lack of ruggedness that I talked about earlier, and quite naturally related to the mining operations early in the state’s history. I didn’t run into too many problems but did notice discoloration of the rock where water flowed over it in the Wilsons, and generally would not trust filtering water next to old rusty mining artifacts.

In addition to the roads, there is just red tape that you have to navigate as a consequence of crowds on and off the trail. Parking at the main Maroon Bells area requires a summer parking reservation that sells out immediately on release, and if you plan an overnighter, you also have to coordinate the timing with the National Forest backcountry permit. RMNP has timed entry into the park (what MRNP adopted recently). Culebra takes $150 to appease the already multi-millionare class landowners. And this is not even factoring in the fact that the parking lot for many trailheads are completely packed on the weekend (see cars getting towed on the Grays/Torreys Trailhead). The masses for outdoor recreation have truly overrun this state, but at least we can contain it here since people think this is the mecca of mountain city living. The San Juans seem to be the last refuge from this but I haven’t spent much time to confirm.

Denver

I have to mention Denver because that’s realistically where I would live if I did reside in Colorado. The biggest conception that people learn early on, especially as they land in Denver International Airport, is “where are all of the mountains!?”. I would consider Denver an extremely suburban sprawled metro area with midwestern sensibilities and not a mountain city by any means. This is similar to Washington where while you can see the mountains, they’re quite far away to get to (other than foothills).

When I did stay in Denver’s suburbs, it was a 1:30 hour drive to Summit County or RMNP, 3:30 to Aspen, 3:00-4:30 to the Sangre de Cristos, 5:00-6:30 to the San Juans (arguably the best part of the state) - and this is not even factoring in the crapshow that is I-70 which could use its own post. Compare this to the Cascades which is about 1:30 to great terrain, and 2:30-3:30 to the best terrain where it actually peters out if you exceed this drive time. In any case, it makes day trips quite hard to get to the best terrain for states like CO/CA/WA.

I frequently postulate that Salt Lake City is what people imagine when they think of Denver: mountains being right there, giant ones at that, with light/dry snow in incredible amounts. Indeed SLC ranks second place for me in terms of where to live in the Lower 48.

Future Trips and Considerations

Note that this writeup has been in the perspective of approaching the mountains on foot. I think I know what I want to get out of this state from the future, and it would probably involve less hiking. It would likely avoid some of the more “boring” subranges as well (e.g. Sawatch, Summit County).

I probably wouldn’t come visit Colorado in mid-winter for resort skiing (there are much better areas for that imo) or ski touring (not super keen on mindless laps for low-angle powder due avalanche danger). But I would come back to spring ski in a year with a fat snowpack, armed with mountaineering skis and potentially a [mountain] [e-]bike. I’d love to tackle lines in the Elk Range, San Juans, RMNP/IPW, Gores, Holy Cross Wilderness, and any other lines with broad appeal just to contexualize the ski terrain here.

In a timeline where I actually take rock climbing seriously, there is also a potential trip for it in the future. I like to think if I did live here, I’d just be doing what Steph Abegg is doing, which seems to be grinding routes in RMNP/IPW. Screw skiing, hiking, and dealing with I-70, I’d be climbing everyday all season! And if we include ice climbing, that’s a real scenario where I’d come back mid-winter.

I’d come back for backpacking as well with my friends who are a bit more casual with pushing the pace and difficulty (or as long runs with cardio hardos), doing something like the Four Pass Loop or Chicago Basin. It’d be nice to visit to see the fall foliage too.

And finally, I can imagine a family trip with a lot of driving. I do think Colorado might be one of the prettier states in the Lower 48 for road views, especially in the San Juans, so it wouldn’t be a bad idea to rent some ATVs or Jeeps and check out some of the alpine roads and mountain valleys between Ouray and Lake City. Ridgway also had surprisingly good food.

Going back to my initial hypothesis, I’m glad I finally checked out Colorado and confirmed that I’m not missing much to live in WA instead. Picking a place to live is really about distinctly identifying and weighing the pros and cons, and I think the wilderness/terrain/views of the Cascades, the WA snowpack, the economy, and the cultural diversity outweigh its crummy weather. I can’t say the pros of Colorado over Washington would push me over to moving (better weather, elevation acclimitization advantage, stupidly cheap flights back home), although I can say I think I would love living here if I was more psyched on climbing (and I’m sure I’d be psyched on climbing if I lived here!).

So while I think I might’ve sounded harsh to my dear square state, I’m actually quite excited to come back! I’m never ungrateful for the variety of things to check out in the American West, and the ease of travel from both Washington State/D.C. will hopefully allow me more chances to do so.