Crestone Peak Trip Report 07/30/2023

Report Type	Full
Peak(s)	Crestone Peak - 14,299 feet Crestone Needle - 14,196 feet
Date Posted	07/30/2023
Date Climbed	07/28/2023
Author	harbergj

Crestone Peak - Crestone Needle, one day, no traverse
I wanted to add a trip report for this because in my research for this trip, I did not see many describing this itinerary. Our goal was to climb Crestone Peak and Crestone Needle in one day, but most of our group did not feel comfortable doing the traverse. I wanted to add this to give the good people of 14ers.com an idea of how long it takes if you were wanting to try this. We drove from Denver, leaving around noon on a Thursday, and got to the upper 4WD trailhead around 4 oclock after a quick pit stop in the springs. I drove in my jeep grand cherokee, and was able to get up to the upper trailhead without any extreme difficulty or damage to the vehicle. However, if you aren't comfortable driving on rough roads, this part of the road may be a bit difficult. From there, we hiked in to the South Colony Lakes area on the old mining road. This is a nice gradual climb up to the lakes. The GPS said it was around 4.5 miles/2hrs to where we set up camp. Although it was somewhat crowded, we were able to find a good campsite around the lower lake and very close to the trail that turns off toward Broken Hand Pass(BHP)/Crestone Needle. 4 of us hit the trail at 4AM Friday morning. As 3 decently fit mid-30 year olds and 1 mid 60s (Bruno) tagging along for Crestone Peak only, I would say our pace was on the faster side, but nothing out of the ordinary. We reached the saddle of BHP at around 5:15AM as the sun was just starting to turn the eastern sky red-orange. We were able to abandon the head lamps on our decent down to Cottonwood Lake, and across the basin before turning up the red gully at around 6:15AM. The fun class 3 scramble up the mostly solid rock in the gully took us about an hour and a half, and after the short summit ridge pitch, we were on top of Crestone Peak just before 8AM. We started our decent of Crestone, and one of our group (Nathan), decided he was up for the traverse. He split off from us about a third of the way back down the red gully, which is well marked with a cairn to the left side of the gully. When back at the serene Cottonwood Lake, Bruno decided to hang out at the lake for a while before making his trek back up BHP and down to camp. This left just 2 of us for the climb back up Crestone Needle. We re-gained BHP just after 10AM and started climbing/traversing over toward the east gully of Needle. At the base of the gully, we ran into Nathan who had completed the traverse and summit, and already had descended the entire gully. We were quite jealous of him and wished we would have had the cajones to do the traverse. But we pushed on, up the solid rock of the east gully. We stayed well right of the dihedral, just to the right of the spine near the notch/summit ridge and found this to be pretty straight forward class 3 scrambling on solid rock the majority of the way, with one section of steeper, easy class 4 around the middle of the way up the gully. Again a short summit ridge scramble, and we were on top of Crestone Needle at 11:30AM. Some puffy clouds had begun to take shape to the west, but nothing threatening. After enjoying the views on the summit for about 20 mins, we started our way down. After a long day, we arrived back at camp around 2PM, putting our round trip time right around 10 hours. We decided we would camp another night, but it would definitely be possible to have broken camp and hiked out that afternoon. I hope this is helpful for some people out there planning their trips! Cheers! Thumbnails for uploaded photos (click to open slideshow):

Crestone Peak - Crestone Needle, one day, no traverse

I wanted to add a trip report for this because in my research for this trip, I did not see many describing this itinerary. Our goal was to climb Crestone Peak and Crestone Needle in one day, but most of our group did not feel comfortable doing the traverse. I wanted to add this to give the good people of 14ers.com an idea of how long it takes if you were wanting to try this.

We drove from Denver, leaving around noon on a Thursday, and got to the upper 4WD trailhead around 4 oclock after a quick pit stop in the springs. I drove in my jeep grand cherokee, and was able to get up to the upper trailhead without any extreme difficulty or damage to the vehicle. However, if you aren't comfortable driving on rough roads, this part of the road may be a bit difficult. From there, we hiked in to the South Colony Lakes area on the old mining road. This is a nice gradual climb up to the lakes. The GPS said it was around 4.5 miles/2hrs to where we set up camp. Although it was somewhat crowded, we were able to find a good campsite around the lower lake and very close to the trail that turns off toward Broken Hand Pass(BHP)/Crestone Needle.

4 of us hit the trail at 4AM Friday morning. As 3 decently fit mid-30 year olds and 1 mid 60s (Bruno) tagging along for Crestone Peak only, I would say our pace was on the faster side, but nothing out of the ordinary. We reached the saddle of BHP at around 5:15AM as the sun was just starting to turn the eastern sky red-orange. We were able to abandon the head lamps on our decent down to Cottonwood Lake, and across the basin before turning up the red gully at around 6:15AM. The fun class 3 scramble up the mostly solid rock in the gully took us about an hour and a half, and after the short summit ridge pitch, we were on top of Crestone Peak just before 8AM.

We started our decent of Crestone, and one of our group (Nathan), decided he was up for the traverse. He split off from us about a third of the way back down the red gully, which is well marked with a cairn to the left side of the gully. When back at the serene Cottonwood Lake, Bruno decided to hang out at the lake for a while before making his trek back up BHP and down to camp. This left just 2 of us for the climb back up Crestone Needle.

We re-gained BHP just after 10AM and started climbing/traversing over toward the east gully of Needle. At the base of the gully, we ran into Nathan who had completed the traverse and summit, and already had descended the entire gully. We were quite jealous of him and wished we would have had the cajones to do the traverse. But we pushed on, up the solid rock of the east gully. We stayed well right of the dihedral, just to the right of the spine near the notch/summit ridge and found this to be pretty straight forward class 3 scrambling on solid rock the majority of the way, with one section of steeper, easy class 4 around the middle of the way up the gully. Again a short summit ridge scramble, and we were on top of Crestone Needle at 11:30AM. Some puffy clouds had begun to take shape to the west, but nothing threatening. After enjoying the views on the summit for about 20 mins, we started our way down. After a long day, we arrived back at camp around 2PM, putting our round trip time right around 10 hours. We decided we would camp another night, but it would definitely be possible to have broken camp and hiked out that afternoon.

I hope this is helpful for some people out there planning their trips! Cheers!

Thumbnails for uploaded photos (click to open slideshow):

Comments or Questions

meg8709

Stats?
9/18/2023 11:16am

Thanks for the report. Do you have the mileage and vert stats?

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