Anyone ever NOT been sketched out on Crestones N. Buttress?

[handonbroward]

Hmm...not sure I follow, Polar. The North Buttress route in this thread is on a spur of Crestone Peak.

Sorry for the confusion. Everything made sense in my head, but I realize now that mentioning the "traverse" and Ellingwood Ledges really muddled up the water. j babu got it, the "traverse" I was talking about is not the Crestone traverse, but the traverse from NW Crestone into the NW Couloir / red notch in order to summit Crestone Peak via N buttress. From everything I've read (hence digging up this old thread), that traverse is the hairiest part of the route and cannot be avoided.

I don't have a need to "bag" any particular peak, I'm just looking for something fun to do without shitting my pants. Hence I mentioned that if I bring a rope and a rack, I might as well do Ellingwood Ledges (which goes up to the Needle as you mentioned) or the Prow on Kit Carson. But yeah, that was probably confusing as hell.


Pic of the "traverse" from benners TR.

Did this last year solo by myself, and this part was definitely the section that gave me the most anxiety ahead of time.

In the pic, the blue line is what appeared to me as the "pants shitting" line, judging by one peak over the edge. I followed the red line, but then cut back to the right (climber's left when downclimbing) along the diagonal break in the rocks that is very visible. There was a big step across at the bottom to get onto the "spire" formation, but this route went 4th class at most, and that being all of 1 or 2 moves. You can see my approximate line in my TR from last year.

Traversing across the spire was definitely a bit spicy, but the position and fun of it took away any of the feeling of real risk. Just went slow and before I knew it was around the corner and heading for the Peak.

All in all, if you can do 4th class with a lot of exposure, and have decent route finding skills, it will be a blast. I was freaked out looking over the edge to the east, but once I settled down and was able to find an alternate route in a couple of minutes. This thing was so much fun I am contemplating going back to do it again this summer if I can find the time.

[nunns]

Pic of the "traverse" from benners TR.

As someone with admittedly VERY limited experience on climbs of this difficulty, I am asking this as an honest question in order to learn.
Why would someone choose the blue line rather than just climbing the gully on the tallest spire? That looks from the picture to be much easier and less exposed.
Is it due to the downclimb that would then be necessary from the top of that spire to the lower spire on the left of the photo?

Sean Nunn

[Conor]

Pic of the "traverse" from benners TR.

As someone with admittedly VERY limited experience on climbs of this difficulty, I am asking this as an honest question in order to learn.
Why would someone choose the blue line rather than just climbing the gully on the tallest spire? That looks from the picture to be much easier and less exposed.
Is it due to the downclimb that would then be necessary from the top of that spire to the lower spire on the left of the photo?

Sean Nunn

It looks easiest from creston peak, but how would you get to the saddle coming from the north?

[zinj]

Slogged up that NW couloir on Crestone Pk, bounced over to E Crestone, but I took one look at NE Crestone, said "Aw, hell no!", changed my pants and penciled in NE Crestone as a "no" on my 14er list.

That said, it is interesting to see here that someone protected it. That might put NE Crestone into play for me. It's not the difficulty of the climbing (on this awesome conglomerate rock) -- it's the exposure/ consequence of making a mistake.

[TomPierce]

Pic of the "traverse" from benners TR.

As someone with admittedly VERY limited experience on climbs of this difficulty, I am asking this as an honest question in order to learn.
Why would someone choose the blue line rather than just climbing the gully on the tallest spire? That looks from the picture to be much easier and less exposed.
Is it due to the downclimb that would then be necessary from the top of that spire to the lower spire on the left of the photo?

Sean Nunn

Yeah, I'm with you, Sean. I think if we'd gone on to Crestone Peak instead of just NE Crestone, I would have taken the ridge/slot/gully. Just looks safer, but maybe there are obstacles there not obvious from the angle of the pic?

-Tom

[gunnison_garrett14]

Pic of the "traverse" from benners TR.

As someone with admittedly VERY limited experience on climbs of this difficulty, I am asking this as an honest question in order to learn.
Why would someone choose the blue line rather than just climbing the gully on the tallest spire? That looks from the picture to be much easier and less exposed.
Is it due to the downclimb that would then be necessary from the top of that spire to the lower spire on the left of the photo?

Sean Nunn

This is an excellent question. It is my understanding that tallest spire above the blue line is the true summit of NE Crestone and the spire on the lookers left is simply a sub-summit. Jomah has a report on this route where he made a similar downclimb but was informed in the comments that he didn't officially summit (https://www.14ers.com/php14ers/triprepo ... trip=15480). When I climbed the route I descended the gully on the tallest spire that you mentioned and found it relatively easy and unexposed when compared to other parts of my climb.

I had to chuckle when I saw this thread in the forum because I thought about making a post similar to this after my ascent of the N. Buttress. Gerry Roach describes the climb as class 3 with a 5.0 downclimb off the summit followed by an exposed 4th class traverse across unprotected slabs. I was either a bit off route or Roach could have just been a bit vague in his description because I found the climb to be a little different than described, and I think that tends to be most people's experience on this route.

I found it to be mostly class 3 with maybe a couple class 4 moves until the last 100-200'. This is where I think I could have gotten off route. I found this last section to the summit to be in the 5.0-5.4 range and vastly more exposed than any other position I've ever been in on any of the 14ers. Not that I've really done anything really crazy on the 14ers, but I have done the bells traverse and capitol's knife edge that were mentioned above a couple times and neither of those felt close to the level of exposure of the last push to the summit of NE Crestone. With those climbs there are tons of positive holds and you are on top of the exposure as someone said earlier. At the crux of this route, I traversed on to an exposed face and was smearing in trailrunners with hundreds of feet of air below me. If I had to compare it to another place on the 14ers, I would compare it to the summit push to the needle after the traverse but steeper and more exposed with fewer knobs to work with. I topped out on the sub-summit and found the climb through the notch to the true summit to be pretty easy. I then descended a gully southward from the summit to the notch at the top northwest couloir route. Roach describes this as a 5.0 downclimb, but I found it to be class 3-4 and downclimbed it facing outwards with no issues. Maybe I just felt comfortable because of the sketchy climbing leading up to that? Personally, I think Roach's route description might just be a little misleading. Either way, the traverse to the needle felt like a walk in the park afterwards.

I too would also like to dispute the earlier claim that a fall would probably not kill you, just make for a bad day. Back in 2012 someone had a fall on this route and hit the ground 200 ft later. No rockfall or inclement weather, just a slip. Even on the easier terrain lower on the buttress, a fall would very likely be fatal.

I'm not trying to be over the top and scare people away from this route. I thoroughly enjoyed it, despite the sketch factor. The majority of the route was class 3-4 and it would be fairly easy to bail before the crux near the summit. I did, however, feel that that the crux was unlike anything else I had done on the 14ers.

[nunns]

We are headed to the Crestones next summer. I believe we will dispense with the traverse, skip E & NE Crestone, and remain on class 3 as much as possible.

Sean Nunn

[benners]

Pic of the "traverse" from benners TR.

As someone with admittedly VERY limited experience on climbs of this difficulty, I am asking this as an honest question in order to learn.
Why would someone choose the blue line rather than just climbing the gully on the tallest spire? That looks from the picture to be much easier and less exposed.
Is it due to the downclimb that would then be necessary from the top of that spire to the lower spire on the left of the photo?

Sean Nunn

Pretty much just because it was 12 years ago and we had no clue what we were doing really and climbed up and over that thing purely by accident...

[nunns]

Pretty much just because it was 12 years ago and we had no clue what we were doing really and climbed up and over that thing purely by accident...

Well you are much more boss than I am. Not sure I will ever try either one. I was just curious.

Sean Nunn

[gb]

Hmmn, I wonder if that's what I downclimbed between the top of the North Pillar route and the Crestone Peak summit years ago. I remember being completely freaked out, but I chocked it up to climbing the 7 pitch 5.8 Pillar route off the couch (since I'm more of a MTBer than a hiker or climber), then doing more climbing/traversing/downclimbing but without the security of a rope.

FWIW to you technical climbers out there, my partner thought the Pillar route was his favorite of the Crestone group (Prow, Ellingwood arete/ledges)

[Boggy B]

Did this twice in past years with standard hiking gear before I was much of a climber. It is an absolutely classic scramble, not to be missed. If you need it, you need it, but I would leave the rope at home; no point in being fatigued from carrying a bunch of gear for 30' of climbing. Assuming the red line is coming up over the back of that sub-summit, descend to the notch between them, then climb up the next pinnacle, which is right in your face. The blue line looks scary and seems like a great way to miss out on NE Crestone. As I recall, climbing directly up from the notch looked hard and both times we climbed slightly to looker's right before going straight up to the top. The difficulty is 5.veryeasy, and if there weren't a massive void below your feet it probably wouldn't register as being harder than any of the scrambling up to this point. After that, you descend the ridge directly off NE Crestone at 4th class. I don't recall anything giving us pause after the airy bit on NE Crestone.

[edit]

I even drew a topo way back then (yellow = traverse, red = NE Crestone, dotted = 5th class):

[XterraRob]

Cool I wanna give this a shot.