Crestone Needle

Route: South Face
Posted On: 1/1/2018, By: KC Aakhus
Info: The road is pretty much dry to the Upper 4WD (Rainbow) trailhead. (There is a bit of snow/iciness at the final drain pipe, making the process of cresting it a little tougher than usual). The 2.5 miles up the old South Colony Lakes road feature constantly changing surfaces: pure ice, dry dirt, patchy snow: BRING MICROSPIKES! Without them, it is a maddening exercise to either: change in and out of crampons over a dozen times, keep crampons on through the dozens of dry/rocky sections between ice, bushwhack to circumnavigate solid ice sections, or any combo thereof. Snow on Broken Hand pass, some lose, some firm. Crampons and ice axe highly recommended, especially for the descent. East gully only has snow at bottom or in deepest parts. Small snow patches on the rib between east and west gully make that the most difficult part, and probably render the 4th class variation a more favorable option (our party of 5 split up on the ascent, but all chose to descend the 4th class variation to avoid the slick gully crossover). Barely any snow in upper portion of west gully, none along 4th class variation. 

Route: South Face
Posted On: 11/27/2017, By: Randy1983
Info: Road to the upper trailhead and to the gate at around 5.3 miles from the lower trailhead is icy. Very icy in some areas. The ice was fairly easy to navigate and we didn't need crampons until the ascent up to BHP. Ditched crampons after BHP and headed for the gullies. Most of the route is pretty clear still. Followed the cairns and avoided snow and ice when possible. Some areas above 13k required some off route climbing to avoid snow and ice. Might have made it a bit more of a class 4. We did see that another climber did make the actual class 4 route and that might be a bit more stable. Snow is still very sugary and only stable in a few areas when it's been wind swept or melted and frozen a few times. We glissaded well after sunset in the dark right after the steep section below BHP which was my first night time glissade. So much fun! The hike out was slow but with perfect weather and half a moon to light up the forest it was still pretty epic. 

Route: South Face
Posted On: 10/22/2017, By: wags
Info: Very nice day. A bit windy above the trees. Some big gusts at the very top. Only used microspikes. Probably should have had an ice axe for the solid snow leading up to Broken Hand Pass. Above Broken Hand Pass there wasn't much snow or ice at all. Never found myself without solid dry handholds, some snow, but easily dealt with or avoided. Went up the class 3 and down the class 4. The class 4 was more enjoyable. YMMV 

Route: South Face
Posted On: 10/2/2017, By: vanessamoyle
Info: Imagine a slip and slide with boulders on it, and that is the best way to describe the needle right now. 

Route: South Face
Posted On: 9/10/2017, By: kayleenann8
Info: Descended the south face. Someone has gone through and added orange/pink flagging to the cairns. Pretty hard to miss "the turn" now. Dry all the way down. No traction needed. Wear a helmet! 

Route: South Face
Posted On: 7/25/2017, By: earthinspired7
Info: No trouble getting my outback up to the upper parking lot. Some crazy dude drove some 2wd car all the way up... I heard some bottoming out but he just floored it... anyways. No need for any micro spikes or anything as snow is 99.9% gone. Plenty of water crossing the paths! Yeah and the route description says its class 3 but the move you have to make to cross from the east to the west gully is pretty sketchy more like class 4 move. My girlfriend is about 5'6" tall and it was tricky for her to get her leg up stretched onto the step you have to make to cross. Weather was SCARY since it had been storming the last 5 days prior and the clouds started at about 10am and grew really fast. We turned around about 200' below the summit due to a massive tall cloud. On the way down it started thundering so we were glad we turned back. CRAZY ROUTE FINDING (lots of fun) 

Route: South Face
Posted On: 7/21/2017, By: Urban Snowshoer
Info: While the main gully is free of snow, there is water running down it in places. 

Route: South Face
Posted On: 7/19/2017, By: brerrabbit
Info: BHP is without snow on the steep sections. There are a few traverses prior to BHP with a bit of snow but we did not take out our ice axes or put on microspikes although we did take care on these sections. The rest of the route is snow-free although we stayed in the east gully so I can't say for sure that there isn't snow in the west gully although it'd be unlikely. 

Route: South Face
Posted On: 7/5/2017, By: soloclimber97
Info: Solo climbed the needle. there's still snow on Broken hand pass that I had to put micros on for and a couple snowfields that I had to cross heading up the pass. Other than that the route is in great shape all other snow is avoidable with the exception of crossing over to gain the ridge that leads into the west gully. 

Route: South Face
Posted On: 7/2/2017, By: iliketrails
Info: Still a decent amount of snow on broken hand pass, definitely recommend traction. I took the east gully all the way to the summit, there is still a bit of snow in the east gully which made it a little difficult. I decided to descend down the west gully and cross over. West gully was snow free. 

Route: South Face
Posted On: 6/30/2017, By: RWSchaffer
Info: The road is clear of snow to the upper stream crossing. Beyond this, the road and trail are crossed by several snowfields, but still 95% free of snow below the large snowfield that leads to Broken Hand Pass. The east gully on the south face of Crestone Needle contains several significant snowfields, but snow is not continuous. Between patches of snow, melt flows down the gully, freezing at night and remaining icy until about noon. Fortunately, one can scramble immediately to the right (east) of the east gully, reaching the summit ridge entirely on dry rock; difficulty can be kept to class 3 for all but a few short stretches. The summit ridge and the approach to the gully from Broken Hand Pass are dry too. I used an ice axe on the snowfields. Traction was useful on the frozen morning snow, less so on the softer afternoon snow. 

Route: South Face
Posted On: 6/1/2017, By: Hjelmstadlt
Info: The South Face is still entirely snow covered with only two distinct rock or ice steps depending on your footwear on the way up (Crampons vs. No Crampons). Since there hasn't been much snow since, there should still be a rather continuous stare case my group punched in. The small saddle before the summit has a rather large overhung cornice that had a crack in it, but is completely avoidable. 

Route: South Face
Posted On: 1/21/2018, By: mengkoh
Info: I have a more detailed write up under "trip reports." Climbing on Crestone Needle was quite good, do to good weather and lots of sun on the south side. The climb was quite easy for us until we made a route finding mistake transitioning from the east gully to the west gully. We almost bailed here, but found a weakness in the rock to get to the west gully. We descended the east gully because we were not sure if we would be able to cross from the west gully to the east gully successfully. The descent was good and I think the snow in the gully helped us descend quickly. 

Route: South Face
Posted On: 11/12/2016, By: STIBungy
Info: Temps are dropping. Woke up at the 2wd lot with temps at 19° this morning. South Colony Lakes are starting to freeze over. There's enough snow on the upper half of BHP for me to need microspikes on the way up and down. Crestone Needle's east gully was mostly dry with a few snow patches that were avoidable. There was some snow on the crossover to the west gully so we went up and down the east gully. I forgot to add, there are 2 shortcut routes between the Crestone trails in the Humboldt trail just east of Lower South Colony Lakes. I've drawn approximate locations of the 2 shortcuts. 

Route: South Face
Posted On: 10/30/2016, By: Dean82
Info: Nice and dry. The only snow was just near the top of Broken Hand Pass. Nothing to worry about. The traverse was nice and dry too.