Crestone Traverse and Sub-Summit Fun

Trip Summary

Amanda, Elliot and I opted for a day trip of the Crestone Traverse. We started at South Colony Lakes 4WD trailhead, hiked to South Colony Lakes and up and over Broken Hand Pass. Then we descended to Cottonwood Lake and ascended the red gully toward Crestone Peak. Then it was "Choose your own adventure" time with the options of Crestone Peak and sub-summits "Northeast Crestone" and "East Crestone." We then descended to the start of the Crestone Traverse, and completed the traverse over to Crestone Needle. We finished with descending the East Gully from the Needle summit, returning to the top of Broken Hand Pass, and descending down past South Colony Lakes to the trailhead.

Detailed in This Report

• Description of "Northeast Crestone"
• Description of East Gully descent from Crestone Needle

Trip Stats

Stats (according to Caltopo and/or Gaia)

• 13.5 miles
• 6,289 feet elevation
• 13:00 hours duration

Times (we were not the fastest hikers out there, but we kept a decent pace)

• 2:56 AM start @ South Colony Lakes 4WD Trailhead
• 4:48 reached South Colony Lakes (break)
• 5:56 top of Broken Hand Pass
• 6:26 Cottonwood Lake (break)
• 8:29 top of red gully
• 8:29-9:34 - we each climbed our choices of Crestone Peak, "Northeast Crestone," and "East Crestone" and took a break
• 9:34 started descent to traverse entrance
• 10:04 started the traverse
• 11:37 reached Crestone Needle summit (break)
• 12:59 PM returned to the top of Broken Hand Pass
• 1:58 back to South Colony Lakes
• 3:56 back to the TH

The Trip

Two years ago I hiked Crestone Peak, but didn't feel ready at the time for the traverse. I was excited to return for the traverse, and to take a look at Crestone Peak's sub-summits.

I'm not going to get into the standard route up Crestone Peak, nor the traverse itself, as the .com description and other trip reports cover those thoroughly. I will add below my contributions on "Northeast Crestone" and descending the east gully from Crestone Needle.

"Northeast Crestone"

There was a nice write-up of "Northeast Crestone" from daway8 that was one of my main resources in studying for this route. After researching, I was most concerned with the descent on the opposite (north) side of the red gully, thinking it sounded loose and sketchy. When we reached this point and started descending, we actually found it to be much better than expected. There was a very narrow little gully that we were able to stem the whole way down before traversing to the right. If you're comfortable with stemming moves, this was the easiest scrambling on the way to/from NE Crestone.

There was a pretty obvious flat spot (referred to as the "landing zone" in daway8's report) that we could spot from the top and knew we wanted to head for. When level with that spot, we crossed over a little rock rib to reach it.

As we started up, we stayed right (daway8's photos show this well). About halfway up, there were two distinct gullies. The right side seemed friendlier at the start, and then we found a little ledge that allowed us to move over to the left side to continue upward.

The last 20 feet or so was definitely the most nerve-inducing! We ascended up on climber's right. The rock was solid enough, but the exposure was pretty intense and we were both feeling the adrenaline. The summit views were wild!

Knowing we had the traverse ahead, we didn't spend much time on this summit. As we descended, we realized we were a bit more comfortable on climber's left/skier's right from the very top:

Otherwise, we followed our ascent line back down pretty much exactly the same. As we climbed back up to the top of the red gully, we climbed the same narrow gully back up, preferring the stemming moves.

Traverse

After each of us tackling our choice of Crestone Peak summits we wanted to go for, we started descending the gully to reach the entrance to the traverse. We didn't have any trouble with route-finding along the way thanks to the thorough .com description and good cairns. I don't really have any more to add to that.

Crestone Needle Descent via East Gully

From the top of Crestone Needle, we opted to go for the more direct east gully so that we could avoid dealing with finding the crossover from the west gully. We headed east off of the summit of the Needle and stuck to the ridgeline until we got a really good view of both gullies, and could get ourselves oriented, referencing photos from the .com.

After completing the traverse, we didn't find anything in the east gully to be worse than that. We didn't have any trouble finding paths of solid rock to follow down. It was steep, but the rock stayed quite solid.

Honestly, the most challenging part of descending was navigating the criss-crossing, spider-webbing trails that led over to Broken Hand Pass from the bottom of the gully! There were multiple very distinct trails. They probably all find their way over eventually, but it was a little taxing after everything else our brains had been thinking about all day.

Conclusion

This was a great day, and we had great weather for such a big day. I would say this might be one of the most sustained-intensity scrambles I've done - there is a LOT of scrambling terrain, and a lot of up and down vertical, between the red gully, the traverse, and the descent of the needle. You need some stamina for this one!

I wouldn't suggest attempting "Northeast Crestone" unless you're really confident in your class 4/low 5 scrambling ability and comfortable with exposure. That was the most nerve-wracking part of the trip. "East Crestone," however, would be an easy tag - it took like 5 minutes to go up from the saddle at the top of the red gully (and we enjoyed having that summit to ourselves for a break!)

I love the Sangres. Not sure when I'll be back, but it was a blast getting to do all this fun scrambling.