This past week, Randy Brooks and I headed down to the Crestone Needle in the Sangre De Cristo Range for 2-days of alpine mountaineering and a climb of one of Colorado’s most famous 14′ers.
Randy, hailing from San Angelo Texas, is well on his way to finishing his 14′er quest, as this was peak number 48 for him, and as some icing on the cake we spent his 45th birthday below the Needle’s imposing Northeast face camped at beautiful South Colony Lakes.
This was my first climb with Randy, and late spring snowstorms had combined to make the standard Southwest Face Route on the Crestone Needle a mixed alpine climbing bag of solid 3rd & 4th class rock, with snow and ice climbing skills necessary.
After a long and slow, but comfortable drive up the South Colony Road in Randy’s beautiful Land Rover we had a mellow hike to camp at South Colony Lakes where we spent the afternoon resting, acclimatizing, and preparing for the next day’s pre-dawn start.
Day 2 found us up and out of camp by 5 am, and dawned clear and sunny on us as we approached the initial difficulties of getting up to Broken HandPass under a beautiful sunrise. The rest of the climb of the Needle’s SW Face Route went smoothly with mixed sections of snow, ice , and rock, as I chose to do the more preferrable and direct but slightly harder line up the ‘east couloir’ all the way to the summit ridge and then a short exposed ridge walk section over to the summit. While this route is slightly harder (4th class) it is more aesthetic, quicker, and arguably safer.
A brief stint on the summit by 9am, had us turning around and descending under increasingly cloudier skies, and we made it safely back to camp by 12:30 after a fairly smooth and uneventful, but enjoyable and successful climb.
In camp we were greeted with a herd of local big horn sheep with babies in tow, where we hung out and took pictures before heading on out of the mountains and back to our respective homes.
Randy, thanks for a great day, and for sharing your 45th birthday with me. I hope your climbs of Mount Wilson & El Diente went as smoothly as ours did. Looking forward to climbing with you again.
—Jayson Simons-Jones (Your Guide)
I had the wonderful opportunity to take 2 guest up Guides Ridge on MT. CB the other day. We had an excellent climb under near blue bird sky’s and very little wind.
