Culebra Peak, 14,047, and Red Mountain, 13,908, June 24, 1995

Used with permission of the author, Bob Broeking. First posted on newsgroup rec.backcountry.

The $25 dollar mountain. Most people wait to climb Culebra until they are near their Grand Slam (climbing all 54 of Colorado peaks over 14,000) because it is the only 14er on private land. As such, the owners of Taylor Ranch charge $25 a head to gain entry to the ranch and climb the mountain.

I had first contacted the ranch foreman, Stet, in late May planning to climb it Memorial Day. But the heavy snowpack had the peak closed and they were not letting climbers in until early June. Fortunately, high temperatures in the last two weeks have really taken a bite out of the snow levels in the southern mountains. Culebra is located near San Luis, the self proclaimed oldest town in Colorado and is only 14 miles north of the New Mexico border.

Denise Snow and I planned our outing for the weekend before her Mt Rainier trip and Mike Tate also joined us at the last moment. Our plan was to drive down Friday night from Colorado Springs and "bivy" in a cheap motel or somewhere near the Taylor Ranch's locked gate. We arrived in San Luis at about 10:30pm and found there were no hotels in San Luis period. We decided to backtrack first to Ft Garland, then Alamosa, CO. Seemed all of the hotel rooms were full due to two weddings and a funeral in town -- go figure!

We got a lot less picky at this point and headed to the local KOA campground where we laid our bivy bags under the stars, getting to sleep about midnight. We all slept soundly until 5:30am when the first rays of the new day began to peak over the summits of Blanca and Little Bear to our east.

We headed back to San Luis where we called the ranch headquarters from a payphone. Stet met us at the gate at 7:00am and escorted us to the headquarters. Early on I was surprised to see no cattle, no horses, not even a corral. I then found out that this was a wildlife ranch, presumably for out of state hunters... :-(

Stet mentioned the owners were thinking about developing a cross country or backcountry skiing business by making more trails through the land they owned in the Culebra range. I wonder how much they will commercialize this wilderness area just because they own the land? At any rate, we paid our $25 each and headed up the newly graded, straight, steep road to about 11,200 where we found some excellent campsites. If you can get there early enough that they will open the gate (about 8:00pm is the latest), drive up to these sites to camp, as they are very beautiful.

There were two other trucks at the end of the road that had been there from the night before from the looks of things and one small party up on a snowfield practicing their self arrests. We three got our packs together quickly and headed up the steep snowfield for about 800' of straight up -- good training for Rainier. We gained the ridge and saw how Culebra or "snake" got its name. It was a long winding ridge with snow cornices to the left and rocky slopes to the right. We headed up this interesting ridge at a strong pace because the ridge of the Culebra range to our east was holding at bay a complete gray cloud cover, even though to our west was blue skies.

The only excitement for the day was as we started up the ridge, Mike slipped to my right, and started to pitch forward. The end of his ice axe (fastened to his pack sticking up) made a clean arc to by jaw on the right side. Luckily his axe was as dull as mine and left nothing but a red mark. A newer, sharper axe I am afraid would have ended the day early and my climbing career permanently perhaps.

The ridge is a narrow affair for most of its length and at the first rise we encountered the mother of all cairns. It was at least 12 feet tall and nicely shaped. We continued up to the first false summit, to the second, and finally topped out on the true summit right at the 2 hour point of our climb. Looking at the summit register it looked like we were the 15th or so climbers to get to the top in 1995 since the mountain was opened a few weeks ago.

The clouds continued to boil to the east of the ridge so we decided it was time to set out for Red Mountain, one of Colorado's centennial peaks (highest 100). We wanted to get our moneys worth!. Denise led the way down from the summit to a connecting saddle at 13,460, for the 500' climb up to the top of Red Mountain. We reached this summit about 1 hour after leaving Culebra and while we snacked, the mist rolled across the summit from the east.

The return journey led us back down to the saddle and then NW, bypassing Culebra's summit by 500' gaining the ridge we had first ascended. There we met three people from New Mexico going down and a party of four going up. We trekked down the ridge with me bringing up the rear. We longed for a glissade down the snowfield, so Denise and I donned our shell pants over our shorts and went for it. Mike preferred to plunge step until he sank to his knees 2/3 of the way down. We reached the cars at about 1:15pm, after 5.5 hours of hiking.

Tired but happy we set off for home with stops along the way to refuel our bodies and the Pathfinder. Before we climbed Culebra, we had the opinion that it might be a somewhat "dull" mountain. Afterward we had an appreciation for the beautiful mountains and its interesting ridge. It is a great bargain climb for $25!

Beta: Northwest ridge, Class II, 4,000' elevation gain (including Red Mt.), 7 miles, 5.5 hours.

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Bob Broeking in Colorado Springs // "bbroekin@nyx.cs.du.edu
" I'll get the rope..." Anderl Hinterstoisser, North Face of the
Eiger, , July 19th, 1936....
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