Thanks first of all to those who responded to my recent forum entry by the same name as this report. I’m mainly writing this report to highlight a very good combo route that’s not specifically identified in the 14ers.com route options but which makes a very good alternative to the infamous Crestone traverse route for those of us who aren’t quite ready for a class 5 with 5/6 exposure (though avid climbers say it’s not that bad and even call it “fun”).

Short overview: starting from the 4WD trail this makes for a real doozy of a day hike at ~15mi RT and a whopping 7,000ft elevation gain (see detailed times at the bottom). I literally hugged my Jeep when I finished. I would highly recommend you consider camping at the lake rather than following my footsteps. The hike back to the trailhead was torturous after having already knocked off both peaks that day.

Since there’s already plenty of great info out there on the Crestones in general, I’ll just add a few observations that might help someone considering this combo, starting with the fact that having arrived at the 4WD trailhead at about 8pm on a Friday night I barely found a place to park and there were no open spots near the trailhead to camp so I just slept in my Jeep.

Starting from the 4WD trailhead at 2:42am it was still dark when I reached the lake. It should be noted that it is VERY easy to lose the trail in the area near the lake if you’re hiking in the dark and your mind has starting wandering after several miles of hiking along a very obvious trail. It’s not so hard in the daytime but given all the great many spur trails going to different camping sites near the lake – some of which are pretty much as well defined as the main trail – you’ll want to pay closer attention than I did when getting near the lake. Apologies to the various campers I likely woke up by stumbling into your campsites and then backtracking. Having the gpx file downloaded and open might be useful if you’re hiking through here in the dark like I did.

Going up Broken Hand Pass, even in somewhat low light, wasn’t as bad as I feared from some reports. Not exactly a “fun” section but it really wasn’t too bad – though a bit worse on the way down. There is some loose scree, just need to take your time. Dropping down the other side of the lake and over to Crestone Peak it’s very easy to follow the trail to the tremendously obvious “Red Gully.”

Crestone Peak is an easier climb up than Crestone Needle (the higher exposure rating on the Needle should give you a hint). I comfortably kept my trekking poles in hand much of the way up the Red Gully. From the top, the traverse to the Needle gives the appearance of being tantalizingly close but in reality I met several folks on the Peak who left for the traverse at the same time as I dropped down to take the Needle from the standard route. Some of them I met near the base of Crestone Needle – others I met when I was nearly at the summit.

So the traverse doesn’t appear all that much faster than dropping down and regaining BHP to go the standard route up the Needle (took me about 4.5 hours peak to peak and I’m not all that fast).

Dropping down the Red Gully wasn’t all that difficult but it felt like it took forever. Going back up the back of Broken Hand Pass is a mostly easy, gentle trail, though not enjoyed by this point in the day.

From this point of the hike you have a very easy decision to make. You’re standing at the top of Broken Hand Pass. Option 1 if you’re already toasted is go back down the pass to where you started. Option 2 is add a mere 1 mile and ~1,300 feet gain to bag a second peak on the same day. As long as the weather is good it’s hard to pass up that option.

Crestone Needle is easily the steepest peak I recall climbing and also about the only one so far I felt like I could actually say I “climbed” – not in the sense of needing ropes or anything, just that it’s the first one where I felt it totally necessary to stash away my trekking poles and engage both hands and feet fully for sustained stretches (I’m the sort of guy who guys up the trough on Longs with trekking poles in hand). It wasn’t difficult climbing given how solid everything was and your hands are typically just needed to help with balance but I did end up doing a couple simple, short class 4 moves which made it easier than hunting around for purely class 3 moves.

In that regard it’s actually kind of a fun place to get a little class 4 experience (there I go using the word “fun” for potentially life threatening maneuvers – before you know it I’ll be back for the traverse – nah!). Actually there are spots going up the Needle where you can choose to attempt some class 4 moves where the danger if you fall isn’t really too bad, and you can generally avoid all the class 4 on this route if you’re patient in picking your line up the gullies.

It should also be noted that at the crux, where you cross from one gully to the next I was very uncomfortable making that one move to get you across the trench separating them – I thought that was pretty close to a class 4 move there (though very brief and without bad exposure) but one guy merely jumped across it (and hoisted a dog over it!). However I was told another lady reached that section and totally freaked out, having such a meltdown that two other young ladies decided to go ahead up the class 4 east gully rather than try to get around the lady who was freaking out.

Going back down the Needle I would stress the cautions about picking the right spot to descend. There were 4 Texans that day who went too far west and got cliffed out above the west gully as me and some other guys were coming up. They asked how to get down to us and the only viable response was – don’t! They had to climb back up and start the descent over again (we met them later at the bottom). Also, I accidently started down the east gully myself, being convinced for a moment that it was the west gully. But as the climbing quickly got much steeper than I remembered I realized my mistake in time to easily correct it. Some people had tied some orange ribbons to some rocks on either side of the cross over point between the gullies. I know some people freak out over Leave No Trace principles but I hope those little bright orange ribbons will be left alone because they really do help make it easier to find the correct cross over point (I almost didn’t even notice the dihedral when going up because I was coming up the far right side of the gully). Thank you whoever put those there. LNT fanatics: please take a deep breath and keep moving – there is some difficult terrain in these gullies if you miss this cross over spot and these very minor “traces” are very helpful to folks who are just learning more difficult routes like this.

Final thought: the road back to the 4WD trailhead is really stinking long (you used to be able to drive up much further), especially if you do this whole thing in one day instead camping at the lake as I should have done.

Times:

2:42am start 4WD trailhead

~6:30am top of Broken Hand Pass (after getting lost in the dark by the lake a couple times)

7:21am bottom of the main part of the Red Gully (Crestone Peak)

8:40am top of Red Gully

8:53am Crestone Peak summit

9:13am begin descent

10:41am in valley below red gully

11:21am back on top of Broken Hand Pass

11:31am start up Crestone Needle

12:36pm in middle of east/west gully cross over

1:22pm Crestone Needle summit

1:50pm start down

3:56pm down off the worst of BHP

5:51pm hugged my Jeep at the 4WD trailhead