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Blanca Peak, 14345', and Ellingwood Point, 14042' - Trip report |
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From: Alan Silverstein
Date: Wed, 20 Jul 88 19:41:13 GMT
Subject: Trip reports: Sangre de Cristos, San Juans
Newsgroups: hpnc.general
This is the first of a series of five trip reports on my Great
Escape this summer, to the Sangre de Cristos and San Juans.
June 30 through July 9 I climbed seven peaks, including six
Fourteeners, on five climbing days, and gained over 16,300
vertical feet. I spent nine consecutive nights camping out,
hence less than $200 in direct expenses, and drove Triceratops,
my 1973 Jeep Wagoneer, over 1000 miles, much of it in 4WD. I
enjoyed one cold, dewy night at 14150', and witnessed a second
fabulous sunrise after one grind of a night climb.
For some strange reason, I'm enjoying revisiting Colorado
Fourteeners. I've now been up 18 of them a *second* time.
________________
Saturday, July 2: Blanca Peak, 14345', and Ellingwood Point, 14042'
The previous Thursday after work, I drove down to Walsenburg
alone in about 4-1/2 hours. I found a camp site in Lathrop
State Park off US 160 just west of town, fairly late. Early the
next morning I continued west and then north to meet Paul and
Carolyn Beiser at 0900. We joined up on the rocky road to Lake
Como, at the point where it turns 4WD. This is 3.3 miles north
of the 160/150 junction and 2.1 miles east of the pavement,
across a cattle guard on a now-unmarked road.
The Lake Como road is frightening. It's awful because nobody
maintains it. I took it pretty slow, but still had to stop
twice to reattach the shift linkage to the transmission!
Fortunately, Jeeps are easy to work on, and the Beisers were
patient...
As the road climbs the view west and down to the San Luis Valley
becomes increasingly spectacular. 2:05 later and 3.9 miles
more, we reached some old ruins at about 10400'. Here a lot of
bare, jutting rock blocks the road pretty effectively, unless
you have a narrow wheelbase and lots of guts. We parked the
Jeep. The Beisers went on ahead while I spent a couple of hours
putting together a backpack -- I really had hoped to drive all
the way to Lake Como -- and chatted with some camp kids who'd
driven up from New Mexico.
My pack must have weighed 60 pounds. It was my first time with
a new, spacious, comfortable backpack, and I thought it was only
1/2 mile more to the lake, so I tossed in a lot of junk without
careful planning. Sigh. It turned out to be more like two
miles (I still don't know exactly how far it is). We gained
~1560' to a lovely campsite above the lake, where the trees thin
out, at 11960'. It took me from 1310 to 1520 to go the
distance.
We had a pleasant evening. Saturday morning dawned quite cold,
being it was early July, so we were slow to get going. We
followed the trail up at 0650, deep in shadow, surrounded by
peaks catching early sunlight. The jeep road tapers into a very
good trail that continues quite a long way, though you can't see
it from below. We didn't leave it, to scramble directly for
Blanca Peak, until well above Crater Lake -- still frozen over,
in icy blue stillness, a huge boulder parked in it.
The scrambling straight N to the summit from above the lake is
pretty decent, as I remembered. We made the summit at 0935;
2:45 to climb 2400'. The peak is small and steep on all sides,
with a very nice view. Mount Hamilton, a foothill to the S,
blocks some of that direction. Awesome Little Bear Peak stands
before the distant San Juans and the San Luis Valley 6000' below
to the SW. With binoculars, I made out Uncompahgre Peak, 113
miles away! The Sand Dunes are hidden by Ellingwood Point, but
the Crestones and Pikes Peak are quite visible to the N and NE.
Huerfano Valley and Mount Lindsey complete the panorama to the
E. On the summit remains a lot of graffiti scratched into the
rocks, some from 1909.
After an hour -- not long enough -- we departed down the N ridge
toward Ellingwood Point. Little cumulus clouds formed in
thermals to the E, a sign of weather to come. The ridge down is
lots of fun, with sheer 2000' cliffs to the right and steep rock
to the left, yet lots of room to descend easily. We reached the
13680' saddle at 1110.
There is a relatively easy cairned route that drops about 100'
more to get around steep rock past the saddle. We followed this
down, then rejoined the ridge up to Ellingwood Point at 1150;
1:18 from Blanca Peak, with a gain of about 460'. Like Blanca,
Ellingwood is rather small and has a very nice view --
especially of the N face of Blanca, which appears unassailably
steep!
Once on the second peak, we would have liked to spend several
hours. However, by now towering cumulus were well formed, so we
left at 1225. Just for fun we followed the SW ridge off the
summit. From Blanca it appeared much easier and less exposed
than was actually the case. Lots of fun! But slow. So before
long we headed straight down the steep slope from about 13600'
towards Crater Lake, carefully picking a doable route. This too
had its "moments".
I reached the lake at 1350 and spent some time enjoying it and
circling its S side while the Beisers went straight back to
camp. I crossed a saddle with a great view, S of the 12840'
knob, and rejoined the trail. It started to drizzle and get
real dark to the west. Just after I reached camp at 1515, the
skies opened up -- talk about timing. We spent several hours
resting in our tents before coming out for dinner and a mellow
cold evening.
This article used with permission of the author.
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