| Peak(s): |
Kit Carson Peak - 14,167 feet |
| Date Posted: | 02/09/2015 |
| Modified: | 02/10/2015 |
| Date Climbed: | 01/24/2015 |
| Author: | Krullin_14ers |
| Peak(s): |
Kit Carson Peak - 14,167 feet |
| Date Posted: | 02/09/2015 |
| Modified: | 02/10/2015 |
| Date Climbed: | 01/24/2015 |
| Author: | Krullin_14ers |
| Kit Carson (KFC) - Spanish Creek Approach - Cole's Couloir |
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Afternoon folks, ready for another report by yours truly? Kit Carson via the Spanish Creek Approach Skiing the South Couloir (Cole's Couloir) Ascent: 10 Hours Descent: 7 Hours About 12k RT vert and about 13 miles RT Start time: 3AM End Time: 7PM This report may be after the Challenger report, but this mountain was skied in the week prior. It all started one friday afternoon. Austin was striving to leave in time to arrive at the trailhead before dark. I had other things on my mind; renewing my passport. I had a trip to Revelstoke, BC planned for mid february and needed an expedited passport. After a brutal, nasty, smoggy drive to Aurora to renew the passport, I headed back to Boulder to get this mission rollin! We ended up leaving B town around 4PM on Friday. The plan was to car camp the night at the trailhead and soldier on the mission in whole on saturday. The Sangres were looking pretty dry, conditions were looking good, and we figured we had a good weather window. CAIC had the avy danger at LOW. We stopped in Buena Vista to pick up the dank dank material we would need for this (brutal) hike the next day. By this, I'm talking bout some powerade and Fried Chicken. Thats right folks, fried chicken, only the best medium rare, tender, juicy Buena Vista friend chicken. Boy did we make that chicken disappear faster than you can say KFC! Anyway, we arrived at the trailhead around 8PM or so, only to find MoneyMike waiting for us. We shared a few laughs with Money, and proceeded to hit the hay, by hay i mean Subaru. Dr. Jon would be arriving in the morning, 3AM to join us for the ascent as well.  ^^After yet another restless night filled with adrenaline, we were off. Spanish Creek style. THis one folks, was unlike the other. There was no clear path, no real true way to get out of tree line. Moneymike had done this a few times before, so placed our faith in him. The Spanish creek approach featured a TON of bush whacking, creek crossing and stepping on fallen logs. This was not your average approach, this was the approach from hell! javascript:emoticon('  ') ^^crossing one of many creeks. This required skis off, and hiking across sketchy logs. fall in your soaked, and your day begins to suck early.  ^^hi  ^^Thankfully, we were with money mike, who inevitably led us to the promised land (treeline) without toooo many problems. It took us about 3 hours to get to this point. It was no walk in the park need i remind you, this was some hard fought skinning. (shoutout to money)  ^^looking back at the hell zone we successfully conquered  ^^Dr. Jon in the FLESH  ^^FInally we get a view of the beasts we were about to lasso. Darn animals seem so distant, but we were hungry.  ^^Here we have our first break. boy was I relieved, relieved to find out i only had half a nalgene left. wow, thought i was fu*#ed. Seriously, I was about to run out of water shortly after treeline. Wanna know something even shittier? All of us were about to be out of water before the boot pack even began (stay tuned!) Of course, we had to do a little photo shoot for Austin's sponsors! ahaha  ^^Austin begins the next phase of the trip, treeline to bootpack. THis area is notorious for fallen trees and really annoying trekking. We stayed just right (viewers) of the fallen debris and were able to avoid nearly all of it. We were skinning down by the creek.    ^^Getting close to the couloir  ^^closer!  ^^looking back at all that hard work, about to stop skiing and start booting!  ^^This is where we stopped skiing. We are about 300 feet below the couloir. At this point, we were about 7 hours in, our water supply was scarce and we still had a few hours to go. The only thing keeping me going was to not let the boys down, and of course that feeling of being on top of a 14er!   ^^Say cheese austin  ^^The boot pack began as a sugary brutal mission. Were talking potholing knee deep down low. It took a few hundred vertical for this to harden up. The snow felt super stable the whole way up. Like i said earlear, the sangres had not seen significant snowfall in quite sometime.  ^^Sunshine and headbands.......just keep booting up that couloir!  ^^After about an hour and a half, here i am taking a bit of a break at the top of the first part of the couloir. From here, you venture skiers right up to the top of Kit Carson. It becomes a bit more steep from this point on. Lots of exposure and rocks. We stuck to the rocks as the snow was thin.  ^^ Looking down the rock section we hiked to get to the top From here, it is only a few hundred feet to the summit. by this time though, the doc and Austin were ahead of me, and money was behind me. I took some time to soak in the views. Absolutely incredible from this slope. I can vividly remember to this day how amazing the view of the crestones was. The feeling of solitude mixed with exposure and danger is one of no comparison. I had to truly find it in my heart to summit this one. We were literally 9 1/2 hours deep at this point. I HAD to summit. I put everything in....and BOOM the summit! Yahoo!!!!       ^^All from the summit, this one, of the Crestones!  ^^After a short summit stop, we were off! finally some skiing! But wait, my legs are jello! Can someone plz put me in the freezer and stiffen me up???? I literally had such a hard time skiing my legs were so tired haha Austin ripping a nice set of turns  ^^Austin with the stones in the background  ^^My favorite, showcasing the steepness of the descent. Always gets me pumped! We made sure to take turns skiing down incase of anything happening. Luckily nothing did, the snow was hard all the way around.  ^^A shot of me, photo cred to Dr. Jon. One of my favorites, man do i love this pic!  ^^Another of me skiing down the bottom of the couloir, as you can see the snow is a bit crusty near the bottom. The descent was one to remember, there was some good snow and some bad. We took the route safely and nothing bad happened. My legs were completely shot and i was severely in need of some water. We met at the bottom of the couloir to enjoy a red bull Dr. Jon had been hiding from us. It was like watching a pack of wolves take on a group of chickens. I sucked every last drop outta that red bull. From here, we decided to head back down. THe only thing was, going down was going to literally like coming up. The route we took went up and down, crossed rivers and crossed about 100 logs. This made the descent suck balls. (pardon me) We tried to send it down as quickly and safely as possible, but still found ourselves going slow. multiple times we had to take out skis off to walk over some nasty feature. We did this all the way to the bottom. Thankfully we were able to stop about half way down and suck up some creek water. Im talking 3 liters each! So refreshing, i can't tell you how much i needed that water!   So anyway, after feeling a bit better after the creek water, we finally made it down, somewhat....only to find out we popped out on the wrong road! Were such idiots! We had no idea where we were or how to get to the car. We were literally in a sacred area filled with sacred buildings. Finally after 45 minutes of walking around, we got to the car! Dr. Jon was waiting for us there. Money arrived shortly after. What a mission! I must say this was the most rewarding day of my life thus far. I got to roll with the big boys up this intense ascent, and to keep up with them meant a lot to me! Stoked on the great day boys! Lessons learned: bring more water! Thumbnails for uploaded photos (click to open slideshow): 
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