Crestone Needle Trip Report 01/03/2017

Report Type	Full
Peak(s)	Crestone Needle - 14,196 feet
Date Posted	01/03/2017
Date Climbed	12/20/2016
Author	MountainDewey

Crestone Dreamin
The first time I saw Crestone Needle was the first time I understood "the fear of God." People use that term now as a joke like "We really put the fear of God in their team." I think a long time ago when the world was bigger and mysterious people knew that anything powerful and unknown had to be respected, but also feared. We came around the bend into the clearing right before the South Colony mine and the mountain was just an outline where the stars ended. But man was it big. We slept outside that night. I lay on my back and looked up at the blank space where we intended to climb the next day, and I was full of fear. I've climbed Crestone Needle a few times since then. My brother Chris got into climbing. He was in high school in Denver and I went to college in New York so we would scheme all year for our summer break trips. We got into winter climbing probably as a way to get one more mountain in per year. We borrowed ice axes, crampons and snowshoes, scrapped together a few REI garage sale jackets. We did Crestone Needle in December 2012. Chris went to college in Spokane and I stayed in New York. Our biggest objectives became winter climbs. We did Keiners and Capitol and Little Bear. And then the idea came up in a May 2014 text: "Ellingwood Arete in winter?" It seemed doable but we couldn't find any info on the internet so we thought what the hell we'd give it a shot. We got shut down almost instantly on our first try. We had bought a bit more gear since our early days of begging and borrowing, but we were still on college budgets. One year was avy gear, one year was ice tools, this year was skis and a sled to haul gear. But I still spend the rest of the year in New York City so I'm a bit out of shape for ski touring, not to mention a complete amateur at skiing at all. We break trail to South Colony, set up camp in the dark, and we are beat. The next day we're getting pounded by the wind, it's below zero, and as we're crossing the lake to start the climb the sun comes up and I remember that old feeling about Crestone Needle. It's BIG. And the Ellingwood Arete is pretty complex. We were not ready. We get to the other side of the lake and dig a snow test pit. Avalanche conditions do not look good on the apron. Chris and I look at each other: time to call it. We head home. Our planned route this year There are a lot of obstacles on the Arete and not one obvious line, so we decide to do the route in summer to feel it out. We had a blast, but we realized it was not going to be as simple as we thought in winter. In summer, we hiked up to the upper lake and camped right below the direct start. In winter, we were pretty sure skiing to the upper lake would be a nightmare. We needed to figure out how to avoid avalanche terrain on the apron and the ramp. In the summer, we cruised right up 1500 feet of Crestone conglomerate in rock shoes. In winter that stuff is a nightmare in crampons and tools because there are no cracks or protection. We definitely knew we didn't want to bring a whole rack to the summit pitches in winter, so aiding it was out of the question. And then there's the descent. We went down the wrong gulley in the summer in broad daylight. It's tough if you didn't ascend that route to pick the right gulley. In winter, we thought there was a good chance we would be trying to find it in the dark. Time to give it a go this year. I had been training all fall, but only running. It's tough and expensive to go the climbing gym in NY, I hadn't climbed since the summer. Chris had been training too, but mostly only climbing: he sets routes in his school gym. Put together we made one fit alpinist. As we were driving down to the Sangres the dash read -18F and the wind was howling. The forecast said 65mph winds that night and over a foot of new snow in the Crestones. But after that, we were supposed to get four gorgeous days. Before going to sleep in the back of the car at the trailhead we checked the late avalanche forecast. Even after the storm it was looking promising. From the winter trailhead there were ATV tracks in the fresh snow. Sweet. Then they ended a quarter of a mile in and we were left to break the trail on our own. Occasionally a deer would follow the road for a short while and we zigzagged with it. When we came around that bend and saw the needle for the first time I was stunned. The Crestone Peak was covered in a shining white layer of rime ice. I have never seen a mountain completely covered like that. We made camp at dark and hacked out a hole in the creek ice to get some water. We decided not to make a summit push the next day but rest and scout our route. First view of the Needle The second day we slept in, and broke a posthole trail up the apron. There was a bit less snow than last year and we were able to avoid avalanche terrain for the most part. We also found a good entry point to the ramp on the far left. The whole day we observed spindrifts and sluff avalanches coming down the face. I was very glad to have the day to watch the face. We ended up choosing a different couloir to take to the upper slopes than we originally planned based on what we saw. After taking a day to break down the route and rest I felt more optimistic than I ever had about the climb. We headed back to camp, made a hot meal, packed our summit packs and tried to sleep. Summit day, alpine start at 3am. We hiked across the lake and followed our postholes up the apron. Chris got to work on the rock band guarding the ramp. After a bit of grunting and swearing he pulled over it and yelled down "Yeah let me drop you down a rope." Apparently it wasn't as easy as it looked the day before. The first bit of alpenglow hit the mountain as we worked our way across the ramp. It was a bit of a wallow, but we made good time to the split between the upper and lower ramps. We chose to use the upper ramp because we could see the spindrift from the main couloir cascading over the upper ledge without hitting it and pummeling the larger lower one. We worked very quickly across the base of the main couloir, and managed to avoid any bigger slides. Gaining the ramp We entered our couloir and found a beautiful thing. Perfect hard styrofoam snow all the way up. What a joy it is to kick steps in perfect snow! We cruised up that whole gully with huge smiles on our faces. Once we got out of the couloir onto the upper slopes it was 9:30. I didn't say it out loud but I was thinking "Wow! We're going to be on the top by noon!" Then we started up the upper snow slopes and I realized I was very wrong. Looking at it from below, I assumed we were going to kick steps to the base of the technical pitches. Now I realized we were going to have to wallow through deep powder between unprotectable rock bands. We moved very slowly swimming up the powder trying to get to each higher bit of solid rock, then wishing we were back in powder as we tried to find tiny pits for ice tool placements in the seamless conglomerate. It was noon before we were at the base of the real climbing. In the couloir The wallowing begins Chris is a much stronger climber, so I counted on him to lead. We roped up, build an anchor and I settled in to belay. Chris led a 70 foot 4th class pitch to get to the base of the first pitch of the head wall. Chris claims the first 40 feet of the first this first head wall pitch was the crux on lead. He stepped out right onto the face and worked up, but again the problem of no crack to follow meant no protection. It feels very dicey trusting ice tools on positive rock holds. 20 feet up he clipped his ice axes to his harness and took off his gloves to climb with his hands. I was getting very cold on belay so I can imagine how sketched out he was to want to climb with bare hands. On the safety of top rope, I chose to keep my gloves on and dry tool it. The second pitch went in much the same way, but Chris was able to find a bit more protection: 5 pieces on the pitch instead of 2. Racking up for the first pitch No gear to be found After the second pitch Chris asked me if I wanted to have the sharp end for the little connecting pitch to get us to the base of the crux pitch. I had been mentally preparing to follow every pitch, but I convinced myself that I couldn't let him lead everything, so I agreed. It was just topping out of our dihedral and walking the rope up to the base of the final pitch. I took the gear and started up. Working out of the dihedral was great. Getting deep solid placements in a crack with ice tools is a blast. Then I pulled up over the lip and was a little surprised. It wasn't just a walk up like I had thought, it was a long series of slabby faces. As I went up standing on the edge of pebbles protruding from the wall and placing the tip of my tool on little crystals it was clear that there was no gear to be had up here. 20 feet. 40 feet. I shoved a little stopper sideways in a shallow crack. As soon as I stepped above the stopper it popped out and slid down the rope all the way down to the dihedral. 60 feet. I was still only halfway up to the belay. 80 feet. I threw a green cam into a dirty little pocket I found. I walked it around till it was solidly on one lobe and kind-of on the other. I looked up at the 30 more feet to the base of the crux pitch and decided I was done. I found another two passable stopper placements and one more terrible cam for good measure. Chris came up and before he could get to the belay I yelled down to him. "I gotta warn you this is isn't pretty. Don't judge me." We had a chuckle about it. I had used half of our cams right below the crux to build the ugliest alpine anchor of my life. He was nice about it. "Yeah these slabs are no joke. Nice lead." But I knew it was much easier than what he had done, and he quickly went up and led the bit above us that had scared me into stopping. The crux pitch went very slow. Chris cruised up to the overhang in the dihedral, but that's where it got real tough without rock shoes. You have to smear your feet out wide while hand jamming above your head to pull over a little overhang, and that just wasn't going to happen in the winter. We had one #3 so Chris proceeded to do a bit of French freeing, walking it up and hanging, walking it up some more. It was a painstaking process but he did an amazing job of keeping a cool head on a couple pieces of gear. The shadow of the Needle began to creep up Humbolt and I knew we didn't have long before dark. The wind picked up a little and I began to do dances on my little belay stance to keep the feeling in my toes. Eventually I heard the magic words "Off Belay!" I was too cold to worry about trusting my tools on the rock. I pretty much just moved as fast I could trusting every crystal to hold me. Even pulling on gear I was huffing and puffing in the overhang. I finally got to Chris and told him "Now THAT was a stout lead." We hurried up the final bit of chossy slope to the summit. The sun had set but there was still a bit of light in the sky. We shared a quick hug, snapped a couple of pictures, and Chris headed down the ridge to find our descent gully while I called our parents. Finally over the technical pitches Starting a long night descent As with most long descents in the dark, it's a bit of a blur of my memory. We did six or seven raps at various points in the gully. It's just a haze of tiredly flaking, tossing, pulling and reflaking the rope. I would toss the rope down the gully, and the wind would blow it right back up into a tangled knot at my feet. Rap, untangle, flake, repeat. We did finally get to see that rime up close and that was very cool. Long fingers of ice four to ten inches long growing at right angles from the rock, following the wind in whatever twisting direction it blew. They were so intricate and ornate. If you touched them they would break off the rock and fall into large piles of ice that would collect in the constrictions of the gulleys. They also made great popsicles as we had run out of water hours ago. Finally we made it to Broken Hand pass and plunged-stepped our way down the endless avalanche terrain. That descent was my least favorite part of the climb by far. It's the one part of the climb that will keep me from coming back. We had very good snow conditions and no signs of instability but I still hated every second of being on those slopes. We found our way back to our tracks and walked back across the lake as the moon rose in the distance down the valley. We crawled back in the tent by midnight. I had brought a celebratory shot of whiskey but we were both too tired and sick from exhaustion to drink it. The next day we packed up and skied out. No one else had been up except a fox that had followed our skin trail for a few miles. We reached the car at dark, completely exhausted and ready to be warmed by artificial heat for the first time in days. The car battery was dead, we had left a light on in the trunk. I started the hike down the road to find a kind stranger with jumper cables. Thumbnails for uploaded photos (click to open slideshow):

Crestone Dreamin

The first time I saw Crestone Needle was the first time I understood "the fear of God." People use that term now as a joke like "We really put the fear of God in their team." I think a long time ago when the world was bigger and mysterious people knew that anything powerful and unknown had to be respected, but also feared. We came around the bend into the clearing right before the South Colony mine and the mountain was just an outline where the stars ended. But man was it big. We slept outside that night. I lay on my back and looked up at the blank space where we intended to climb the next day, and I was full of fear.

I've climbed Crestone Needle a few times since then. My brother Chris got into climbing. He was in high school in Denver and I went to college in New York so we would scheme all year for our summer break trips. We got into winter climbing probably as a way to get one more mountain in per year. We borrowed ice axes, crampons and snowshoes, scrapped together a few REI garage sale jackets. We did Crestone Needle in December 2012. Chris went to college in Spokane and I stayed in New York. Our biggest objectives became winter climbs. We did Keiners and Capitol and Little Bear. And then the idea came up in a May 2014 text: "Ellingwood Arete in winter?" It seemed doable but we couldn't find any info on the internet so we thought what the hell we'd give it a shot.

We got shut down almost instantly on our first try. We had bought a bit more gear since our early days of begging and borrowing, but we were still on college budgets. One year was avy gear, one year was ice tools, this year was skis and a sled to haul gear. But I still spend the rest of the year in New York City so I'm a bit out of shape for ski touring, not to mention a complete amateur at skiing at all. We break trail to South Colony, set up camp in the dark, and we are beat. The next day we're getting pounded by the wind, it's below zero, and as we're crossing the lake to start the climb the sun comes up and I remember that old feeling about Crestone Needle. It's BIG. And the Ellingwood Arete is pretty complex. We were not ready. We get to the other side of the lake and dig a snow test pit. Avalanche conditions do not look good on the apron. Chris and I look at each other: time to call it. We head home.

There are a lot of obstacles on the Arete and not one obvious line, so we decide to do the route in summer to feel it out. We had a blast, but we realized it was not going to be as simple as we thought in winter. In summer, we hiked up to the upper lake and camped right below the direct start. In winter, we were pretty sure skiing to the upper lake would be a nightmare. We needed to figure out how to avoid avalanche terrain on the apron and the ramp. In the summer, we cruised right up 1500 feet of Crestone conglomerate in rock shoes. In winter that stuff is a nightmare in crampons and tools because there are no cracks or protection. We definitely knew we didn't want to bring a whole rack to the summit pitches in winter, so aiding it was out of the question. And then there's the descent. We went down the wrong gulley in the summer in broad daylight. It's tough if you didn't ascend that route to pick the right gulley. In winter, we thought there was a good chance we would be trying to find it in the dark.

Time to give it a go this year. I had been training all fall, but only running. It's tough and expensive to go the climbing gym in NY, I hadn't climbed since the summer. Chris had been training too, but mostly only climbing: he sets routes in his school gym. Put together we made one fit alpinist. As we were driving down to the Sangres the dash read -18F and the wind was howling. The forecast said 65mph winds that night and over a foot of new snow in the Crestones. But after that, we were supposed to get four gorgeous days. Before going to sleep in the back of the car at the trailhead we checked the late avalanche forecast. Even after the storm it was looking promising.

From the winter trailhead there were ATV tracks in the fresh snow. Sweet. Then they ended a quarter of a mile in and we were left to break the trail on our own. Occasionally a deer would follow the road for a short while and we zigzagged with it. When we came around that bend and saw the needle for the first time I was stunned. The Crestone Peak was covered in a shining white layer of rime ice. I have never seen a mountain completely covered like that. We made camp at dark and hacked out a hole in the creek ice to get some water. We decided not to make a summit push the next day but rest and scout our route.

The second day we slept in, and broke a posthole trail up the apron. There was a bit less snow than last year and we were able to avoid avalanche terrain for the most part. We also found a good entry point to the ramp on the far left. The whole day we observed spindrifts and sluff avalanches coming down the face. I was very glad to have the day to watch the face. We ended up choosing a different couloir to take to the upper slopes than we originally planned based on what we saw. After taking a day to break down the route and rest I felt more optimistic than I ever had about the climb. We headed back to camp, made a hot meal, packed our summit packs and tried to sleep.

Summit day, alpine start at 3am. We hiked across the lake and followed our postholes up the apron. Chris got to work on the rock band guarding the ramp. After a bit of grunting and swearing he pulled over it and yelled down "Yeah let me drop you down a rope." Apparently it wasn't as easy as it looked the day before. The first bit of alpenglow hit the mountain as we worked our way across the ramp. It was a bit of a wallow, but we made good time to the split between the upper and lower ramps. We chose to use the upper ramp because we could see the spindrift from the main couloir cascading over the upper ledge without hitting it and pummeling the larger lower one. We worked very quickly across the base of the main couloir, and managed to avoid any bigger slides.

We entered our couloir and found a beautiful thing. Perfect hard styrofoam snow all the way up. What a joy it is to kick steps in perfect snow! We cruised up that whole gully with huge smiles on our faces. Once we got out of the couloir onto the upper slopes it was 9:30. I didn't say it out loud but I was thinking "Wow! We're going to be on the top by noon!" Then we started up the upper snow slopes and I realized I was very wrong. Looking at it from below, I assumed we were going to kick steps to the base of the technical pitches. Now I realized we were going to have to wallow through deep powder between unprotectable rock bands. We moved very slowly swimming up the powder trying to get to each higher bit of solid rock, then wishing we were back in powder as we tried to find tiny pits for ice tool placements in the seamless conglomerate. It was noon before we were at the base of the real climbing.

Chris is a much stronger climber, so I counted on him to lead. We roped up, build an anchor and I settled in to belay. Chris led a 70 foot 4th class pitch to get to the base of the first pitch of the head wall. Chris claims the first 40 feet of the first this first head wall pitch was the crux on lead. He stepped out right onto the face and worked up, but again the problem of no crack to follow meant no protection. It feels very dicey trusting ice tools on positive rock holds. 20 feet up he clipped his ice axes to his harness and took off his gloves to climb with his hands. I was getting very cold on belay so I can imagine how sketched out he was to want to climb with bare hands. On the safety of top rope, I chose to keep my gloves on and dry tool it. The second pitch went in much the same way, but Chris was able to find a bit more protection: 5 pieces on the pitch instead of 2.

After the second pitch Chris asked me if I wanted to have the sharp end for the little connecting pitch to get us to the base of the crux pitch. I had been mentally preparing to follow every pitch, but I convinced myself that I couldn't let him lead everything, so I agreed. It was just topping out of our dihedral and walking the rope up to the base of the final pitch. I took the gear and started up. Working out of the dihedral was great. Getting deep solid placements in a crack with ice tools is a blast. Then I pulled up over the lip and was a little surprised. It wasn't just a walk up like I had thought, it was a long series of slabby faces. As I went up standing on the edge of pebbles protruding from the wall and placing the tip of my tool on little crystals it was clear that there was no gear to be had up here. 20 feet. 40 feet. I shoved a little stopper sideways in a shallow crack. As soon as I stepped above the stopper it popped out and slid down the rope all the way down to the dihedral. 60 feet. I was still only halfway up to the belay. 80 feet. I threw a green cam into a dirty little pocket I found. I walked it around till it was solidly on one lobe and kind-of on the other. I looked up at the 30 more feet to the base of the crux pitch and decided I was done. I found another two passable stopper placements and one more terrible cam for good measure. Chris came up and before he could get to the belay I yelled down to him. "I gotta warn you this is isn't pretty. Don't judge me." We had a chuckle about it. I had used half of our cams right below the crux to build the ugliest alpine anchor of my life. He was nice about it. "Yeah these slabs are no joke. Nice lead." But I knew it was much easier than what he had done, and he quickly went up and led the bit above us that had scared me into stopping.

The crux pitch went very slow. Chris cruised up to the overhang in the dihedral, but that's where it got real tough without rock shoes. You have to smear your feet out wide while hand jamming above your head to pull over a little overhang, and that just wasn't going to happen in the winter. We had one #3 so Chris proceeded to do a bit of French freeing, walking it up and hanging, walking it up some more. It was a painstaking process but he did an amazing job of keeping a cool head on a couple pieces of gear. The shadow of the Needle began to creep up Humbolt and I knew we didn't have long before dark. The wind picked up a little and I began to do dances on my little belay stance to keep the feeling in my toes. Eventually I heard the magic words "Off Belay!" I was too cold to worry about trusting my tools on the rock. I pretty much just moved as fast I could trusting every crystal to hold me. Even pulling on gear I was huffing and puffing in the overhang. I finally got to Chris and told him "Now THAT was a stout lead." We hurried up the final bit of chossy slope to the summit.

The sun had set but there was still a bit of light in the sky. We shared a quick hug, snapped a couple of pictures, and Chris headed down the ridge to find our descent gully while I called our parents.

As with most long descents in the dark, it's a bit of a blur of my memory. We did six or seven raps at various points in the gully. It's just a haze of tiredly flaking, tossing, pulling and reflaking the rope. I would toss the rope down the gully, and the wind would blow it right back up into a tangled knot at my feet. Rap, untangle, flake, repeat. We did finally get to see that rime up close and that was very cool. Long fingers of ice four to ten inches long growing at right angles from the rock, following the wind in whatever twisting direction it blew. They were so intricate and ornate. If you touched them they would break off the rock and fall into large piles of ice that would collect in the constrictions of the gulleys. They also made great popsicles as we had run out of water hours ago.

Finally we made it to Broken Hand pass and plunged-stepped our way down the endless avalanche terrain. That descent was my least favorite part of the climb by far. It's the one part of the climb that will keep me from coming back. We had very good snow conditions and no signs of instability but I still hated every second of being on those slopes. We found our way back to our tracks and walked back across the lake as the moon rose in the distance down the valley. We crawled back in the tent by midnight. I had brought a celebratory shot of whiskey but we were both too tired and sick from exhaustion to drink it.

The next day we packed up and skied out. No one else had been up except a fox that had followed our skin trail for a few miles. We reached the car at dark, completely exhausted and ready to be warmed by artificial heat for the first time in days. The car battery was dead, we had left a light on in the trunk. I started the hike down the road to find a kind stranger with jumper cables.

Thumbnails for uploaded photos (click to open slideshow):

Comments or Questions

Stratosfearsome	This is so rad! 1/3/2017 9:56pm Thank you for sharing and great job fellas.
ulvetano	Wow! Way to go! 1/4/2017 11:12am Impressive outting gents! Did you seem much ice up there elsewhere on the face? Burly and creative objective though. Kudos!
timashurst	Awesome 1/4/2017 11:38am Great report for an awesome climb!! The Arete is a goal of mine but I've never even considered a route like that in winter conditions. Keep up the good work.
Marmot72	Guts! 1/4/2017 9:43pm Damn. Pretty incredible.
MountainDewey	Ice 1/5/2017 3:59pm @ulvetano: It depends on the year. This year there wasn't much water ice. Last year around the same time I remember lots of ice on the first rock band below the ramp. Here's a picture from 2012:
Rollie Free	Hmm 1/6/2017 7:28pm I would say 'ballsy' but give you a rating of at least 3 balls maybe 4. More than my pay grade.
MikeK	Golly! 1/8/2017 8:07pm Damned impressive, fellas! I learned a lot just watchinhg this.
mountain_stoke	Awesome 1/9/2017 11:16am WOW! Good work guys!
Oman	Great climb, great report 1/9/2017 6:07pm I raise my glass to you.
colorado_kid	Dope! 1/10/2017 2:04pm Damn dude! Doing the Ellingwood Arete in the winter is possibly one of the most badass things one can do. Cheers!

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