Winter Crestone Peak

from Cottonwood Creek Trailhead

This was my second visit to the city of Crestone this winter. The drive from Fort Collins took about 4 1/2 hours, and I arrived at the Cottonwood Creek trailhead very late and parked behind Ben's van in a pull-out. The road coming in had been dry and is for the most part 2WD friendly. A posted sign on the way in said I was passing through private property but no special permission was needed (like there is for Spanish Creek). It didn't take long to settle in and I was sleeping by midnight with a 3:30 wake up time. I was very excited about climbing Crestone Peak in the winter but maybe a little apprehensive too. I'd heard the approach can be difficult, and also, I was aware that climbing couloirs in winter can be tricky so a summit attempt might not be possible.

Day of Climb: January 13th, 2022

Trailhead: Cottonwood Creek

Peak: Crestone Peak

Mileage and Elevation Gain: 12.5 miles and 5409 feet of gain.

The next morning Ben and I were geared up and hiking before sunrise. The first mile or so went by quickly following a set of day old footsteps through the dark in ankle deep snow. When those petered out travel became more difficult and the trail was hard to discern in the dense forest with deepening snow. Plenty of deadfall added to the difficulty and we began to rely on animal tracks to stay on trail and/or we looked for cut trees. Still, we made good time and hit the slab section at around the 4 mile mark while still dark. Microspikes were put on here and navigating these without much light took extra care, but I don't believe the climbing ever went beyond class 2+. We exited the slab section by ascending a steep gully on the west side of the drainage. We then climbed a steep talus slope continuing north as we slowly angled back towards the creek.

Next we passed through a boulder field and crossed back over the drainage and worked our way through the willow section. The Crestones were now in view and looked intimidating.The Red Gully looked steep as heck from this distance but the snow looked manageable and even thin in spots. Finally, it felt like we were getting somewhere and the fun approach was almost over.

Once passed the willows we sidehilled across the base of "Crestolita" and entered the upper basin. We were now just west of Willow Lake and getting very close to the Red Gully.

The final approach to the base of Crestone Peak was mostly dry. We finally decided to stash our snowshoes (which we never used) and continued on until we met up with the standard trail just east and a bit below the gully. The trail then took us around some steep rocks and across a snowy ramp where we found the gully entrance which we started climbing immediately.

The lower section of the red gully was a mix of mushy snow climbing and short class 3 scrambles. As we progressed we found more and more snow and it seemed to firm up nicely the higher we went. Starting just below the halfway point there was continuous snow to the saddle and Ben switched into his crampons. I decided to stay in microspikes, but this was dumb, and I wouldn't recommend. As we climbed higher we passed through several steep sections with the steepest being the final bit. It never got crazy steep though and luckily, the snow stayed stable the whole way.

We stopped just short of the saddle with "East Crestone" and started climbing the ledges section. The ledges were partially covered in snow, but it was still a pretty easy class 3 scramble with the snow only slightly adding to the difficulty. The exposure was minimal and we quickly made our way up following the path of least resistance and summited before are noon target time.

The summit was almost windless and the views as expected were amazing! We were super stoked to get a winter Crestone Peak. CP wasn't even on my radar for the year. It would have been nice though to savor it and hang for awhile, but we still had a long descent. Also, we were still contemplating an attempt at Crestone Needle so we departed quickly.

The descent off the ledges and down the red gully went without a hitch. However, we found that with warming temps the snow was becoming unsupportive and we decided against going for the Needle this afternoon. Instead, we picked up our stashed snowshoes and headed back down Cottonwood Creek and reached our vehicles just before dark.