This past weekend, Tom Kaptur, from Chicago, Illinois returned to CBMG in his quest to finish all of the Colorado 14ers. With beautiful clear summer weather, Tom & CBMG Owner / Guide, Jayson Simons-Jones headed down to the rugged Sangre De Cristo Mountains to capture three of the four 14,000′ peaks in the remote Sierra Blanca range.

After a mid-day rendezvous in the San Luis Valley desert at 8,000′ we headed via truck and our own two legs up the rugged and un-drievable Lake Como Road. Reaching Como Lake by evening time, we set-up camp had some dinner below the Alpenglow on Little Bear Peak (14,037′), and got some eraly zzzz’s for our early morning summit attempt.

Friday morning dawned clear with a moderate overnight freeze, and we were up at 4:00 am, with crampons on for the first snow climb up to the ridge by 5:30 am. After this fairly easy unroped climb, we traversed along the West Ridge of Little Bear to the Southwest Face and “The Hourglass” the route’s crux. Being early and the only climbers on Little Bear all day, we were treated to good firm snow and some alpine ice in this small couloir that spills onto the upper face and leads to the summit. After busting the rope out for a small short-roping section and one belayed pitch on about 40′ of verglas ice on rock we were on the summit of Little Bear Peak (14,037′) by 8:30 am. 30 min later we descended down, before snow conditions got too soft for walking and sun-hit started dislodging frozen rocks on the upper face. The final descent back down the west ridge couloir proved the most difficult part of the day, as softening snow led us through 700′ of waist-deep postholing. However, by 12:30 pm we were back in camp drying ourselves off in the hot mid-day sun, cooking up some lunch and napping in the afternoon breeze.

Saturday morning brought an even earlier start (3:00 am) so as to avoid a longer post-holing slog-fest later in the day. As we donned headlamps and headed towards Blanca Peak (14,345′) & Ellingwood Point (14,042′) at the head of the Como Lake Valley, we were again greeted by a cloudless morning and a beautiful sunrise on the surrounding peaks and out on the San Luis Valley desert floor. By 6:00 am we were high on the regular route to Blanca Peak and reached the summit by 6:30 am. A short snack and break here, before traversing back down the ridge to the saddle, where we put our crampons back on again, and headed up the South Face of Ellingwood Point for our final of the three 14ers we had as our objective. Firm and steep roped snow climbing brought us to the Ellingwood Point summit by 7:45 am.

After a good break on our last of 3 summits, we headed down by 8:15 am, and were back in camp by 10:15 am, having happily avoided any postholing this time around. After another leisurely lunch we packed up camp and headed back down the rocky and hot Lake Como road to the truck, and on to the valley floor……. and Tom back to Chicago.

Tom, congradulations on a successful and ambitious weekend of Colorado 14er mountaineeirng….it was great fun and a great adventure…..

 Your Guide

—Jayson Simons-Jones

CB Mountain Guides

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