This would be the first year that I brought my buddy Nabeel with me to Colorado for 14ers. I had a pretty good idea that Nabeel would be solid. He is a fitness machine, and he always seems to be very comfortable with climbing, and with heights. He would prove my instincts to be very solid.We arrived at Denver International around 8:30 pm. We drove through the city ofWestcliffe, and arrived at the South Colony lower 2WD trailhead around midnight. I had heard that the upper trailhead was accessible to 2WD (two wheel drive), so I decided ahead of time that we would try it. Plus, we were in a rental car, and as long as we didn’t leave any big dents, I wasn’t too worried. We got to the lower trailhead, and kept on driving. It got rougher after the lower parking lot, but it was very manageable, with little threat of hitting the bottom of the car on any rocks. The Chevy HHR that we had rented was doing fine. At just under a mile past the parking lot we encountered an uphill turn to the left. It looked rough, but I thought we could make it. We got about half way up the hill, and the tires lost traction. The dirt was very dry and loose. We backed down and made another run at it, and lost traction at about three quarters of the way up. At that point we thought that we were pretty close, and decided to have Nabeel get out and push a little bit; just enough to help keep forward momentum and try to avoid loosing traction. A couple more tries, and nothing got much better. And, it was getting harder to get back down the hill without getting stuck on any rocks. We tried one more time, and made it to the very top, but then lost traction again. Nabeel was pushing, and when I put on the brakes, the car roll back a little bit. That was when I heard Nabeel behind the car, cursing, and obviously in pain. I knew that the car had only rolled back about 12 inches. So, I knew that Nabeel hadn’t been run-over, or anything like that. I figured that he had fallen and scrapped his knees or something. Nope! Nabeel’s shoulder had gotten dislocated, and was out of the socket. Ouch! Nabeel had pulled his shoulder out of socket about two years ago at the climbing gym. And, I guess it had never been the same since. I guess the car rolling back a little bit had put his shoulder in an awkward position, and it had come out of socket again. He was in serious pain. He walking around, with his should in a funny orientation. I was quizzing him about how bad it was, and whether we needed an emergency room or not. He wasn’t sure, and was trying to lower his arm back into socket. In a minute or so, he was able to pop his shoulder back into place. I should mention that the first time he did this (about 2 years ago) Nabeel required a trip by ambulance, to the emergency room, and his arm was in a sling for weeks. Nabeel got back into the car, and without hesitation, I decided that we were done trying to get up that darn hill. We’d spent almost an hour trying without much success, and now Nabeel was hurt. I started back towards the lower parking lot, with Nabeel in the passenger seat mumbling about seeing stars, and feeling like he needed to pass out. Later he admitted to me that he also felt like he needed to barf. He didn’t barf, or pass out. As we worked our way towards the lower parking lot, we looked for potential parking spots along the way. But, nothing appealed to us, and we ultimately made the decision to just go down to the lower parking lot. We got there, and setup our sleeping bags and pads to sleep in the back of the HHR. We finally got tucked in around 1:30 am; only 3 or 4 hours of sleep time available before we needed to get up to start hiking. I quizzed Nabeel multiple times about his shoulder and he said it hurt, but he didn’t know how it would feel later, or if it would affect the hiking or climbing. We’d have to wait til morning to see.In the morning, we got up at 4:30 am, but were slow to get started. The first thing that Nabeel said to me in the morning was, “I didn’t sleep at all, I was nervous about the hike, and nervous about the shoulder.” And, I’m sure that sleeping at 8,000 feet, coming from sea level, didn’t help either. I didn’t sleep well either. I might have slept an hour total. Eventually, we gathered up everything that we needed for a backpack hike and camp atSouthColonyLake. Our packs were huge, and in hindsight we brought we too much crap. We each had a 2 person tent. I brought a small rope, harness and climbing gear, which we never used. And, I think that we brought enough food for 4 or 5 days (we stayed 2.5 days). As I donned my heavy pack, immediately I thought about Nabeel’s shoulder again. My pack was killing my shoulders already, and I didn’t have anything wrong with mine. Nabeel said that it hurt, but that the pack didn’t hurt it anymore than without it. Whew! “Test one passed” on the bum shoulder. Now, just to see how well it would deal with the other challenges: long days of hiking, and hours of challenging class 3 and class 4 climbing moves. We finally got on the trail around 6:15 am.We started up the trail, and in about 30 minutes we made it to the point where the car got stuck. I was frustrated that we hadn’t made it, but it didn’t look any easier in the daylight. We had made the right decision. As we continued up the road, we noted several other points where we would have probably had difficulty getting up. Plus, if we had made it to the upper trailhead parking lot, we would have eventually had to go back down, and that is sometimes harder. We continued, and got to the upper parking lot (2.6 miles hike) in about 1 hour 10 minutes. We had set a pretty good pace, especially with the huge packs. We took a short break, and continued up the trail. I should mention that there were about 15 vehicles in the upper parking lot, and only two of them were cars, a junky old Mitsubishi and a Subaru (which I assume was a 4WD). As we continued up the trail, the heavy pack was starting to wear on me. Nabeel seemed to be going very strong though. After another hour we took another short break. Soon after we continued, we ran into a fork in the road. We could take the left and follow the main road which was less steep, but a longer hike. Or, we could take the right and follow the old “pack trail,” a steeper, but shorter hike. We took the pack trail. In another hour and a half we finally made it up to the lake. We spent 20 minutes or so looking for a good place to camp, and then plopped our stuff down. We ended up camping just off the trail, about 100 feet from the fork in the trail that goes to the Crestones or to Humboldt. Our total time to camp, including breaks was right around 4 hours. It was nice to finally ditch all that weight. We setup camp, ate a bit, and then rested, getting ready for a quick hike up Humboldt.At about 11 am, we started up towards Humboldt. The trail is very easy to follow. There was a fork in the trail just past our camp. We took the right fork. Then, the trail crossed the creek, and started up towards the base of the saddle between Humboldt andObstructionPeak. From the valley to the saddle, the trail has multiple switchbacks, which make the hike pretty easy. I’d estimate it took about an hour for us to reach the saddle. Even though we had dumped most of our weight, and were only carrying light day packs, the higher elevations were starting to get to us. This was the first time – and only time on the trip – that I was worried that Nabeel might give it up, and quit the hike. He was looking pretty rough, and tired. We would hike maybe 100 feet at a time, then stop and take a bunch of breaths. Once we got to the saddle, the rest of the route up the ridge was pretty clear, but it didn’t get any easier. The class 2 starts on the ridge. It isn’t exactly difficult, but we weren’t exactly feeling great either. We were tired from the 4 hour hike with huge packs. Plus, we were exhausted from almost no sleep the night before. But, we trudged forward. The class 2 didn’t actually seem to be any harder. The summit was calling us at that point. We got to the false summit, and kept on moving. We ultimately made it to the top in around 2 hours 10 minutes from camp. We were beat. We both sat down. I pulled out my iPhone and wandered around trying to get service. When I did, I called home to let all know that we were doing great. Nabeel lay down on the summit to rest. He later told me that he almost fell asleep on the summit. We logged into the register, ate some food, and just enjoyed the summit. We spent over a half hour on the summit, and eventually decided that we needed to get down to camp in order to get some real. Plus, we had some buddies hiking in today, and we needed to be near camp to try and meet up with them. We started down, and everything seemed much easier. This was day 1 of the trip, and the legs and feet were still feeling pretty good. And, the lungs were much better on the downhill then they were on the up hill. I had envisioned possibly taking any extra couple of hours to grabColumbiaPeak, a high 13er, about a mile west of the Humboldt saddle, but those thoughts vanished quickly. We made it back down to camp in around an hour 20 minutes.When we got back to camp, we both crawled into our tents, and took well deserved naps. At that point, I was glad to have hauled up two two-person tents. We got up around 6 pm, and started scanning the radio for my buddies Keith and Beau. While we were waiting, we met some new friends – Darrin and Otina – who were also waiting for Keith. We chatted with them, and ate some half cooked rice meals. Keith strolled in just after dark. I introduced myself to Keith in person, since we had never officially met, except through emails and Facebook. Soon afterwards, Nabeel and I strolled off to bed. We had plans to get up at 4:30 am and really needed some solid sleep.Nabeel and I crawled out of our tents around 4:30 am. We got our stuff together, and scarfed down some breakfast. We had talked seriously about doing the Peak to Needle upper traverse, and brought a rope and harness just in case. In reality, we probably would not have needed them on the traverse. But, after talking with Darrin and Otina the night before we were leaning towards doing the peak and needle without the traverse. We would do the Peak first, then return toCottonwoodLake, then back up Broken Hand Pass. We had to go back up overBrokenHandPassto get back to our camp regardless. OnBrokenHandPasswe would decided if we had enough strength left to do the Needle also.We finally got started around 5:15 am. At the fork in the trail, we took the left fork this time. Initially the trail up towardsBrokenHandPasswas very clear. But, at some point, in the boulder fields, we lost the trail. We knew the direction that we needed to go, so we were not worried. Ultimately, I spotted another hiker passing about 50 feet to our left on the boulder field. We made our way to where he had passed, and found the trail again. We made it to the base ofBrokenHandPass, and started up. The trail upBrokenHandPasswas very nasty and loose. But, it wasn’t technically very difficult. Ultimately we made the top of the pass in just over an hour. We took a break at the top of the pass, and chatted with the two guys that had passed up. The first guy was super eager to do the traverse. The second guys was skeptical about the traverse. When the second guy heard about our idea to do both the Peak and Needle, but without the traverse, he seemed very interested in that version, rather than the traverse. They started down towardsCottonwoodLakea few minutes before us. Then, we started down towards the lake. The other two guys pulled away from us pretty steadily, down the pass and towards the lake. The route down the pass and towards the lake was not bad. A tad bit steep, but overall pretty pleasant. When we got down into the lake valley, the trail was flat, and very pleasant.We continued on to the lake, past the lake, and ultimate made it to the base ofCrestone Peakand the bottom of the Red Gully. We got to the bottom of the gully in just under an hour from the top of the pass, and about 2 hours from leaving camp. We never did catch up with our two leaders, but we saw them pretty much the whole way. We did catch and pass another couple, who were going strong, but just a tad slower than we were. We started up the Red Gully, and Nabeel and I were having a blast. The rock was solid, the climbing steep, but safe. I quizzed Nabeel multiple times about how he was doing, and how his shoulder was doing. Nabeel had never been on solid class 3, and this stuff was very solid. He always responded that he was doing great, and having fun. And, the shoulder wasn’t causing him any issues, although it was a bit sore. We continued up the red gully, slowly, but steadily. There were some loose sections, but most of the gully was pretty solid. There was never any point that I felt the exposure or looseness was a concern. But, I will say that the red gully climb is probably the longest sustained class 3 climb that I’ve done. It is just a very high climb. I think that is more than a thousand feet of solid class 3 climbing. As we got towards the top of the red gully, we spotted a rather large group (about 12 people) that was moving pretty slow. We gained no the, but I wasn’t sure that we would pass them before we reached the top. As we got closer, it was clear that we could pass them. Nabeel and I moved a little to the left of the gully to pass them. I didn’t want to be under a large group in the gully – for fear of loose rocks. We passed them, and made the ridge, just under the summit. The large group stopped for a long break a this point. We worked our way along the ridge, heading for the summit. This last bit of ridge is the first point that I felt was really very exposed. There were a couple of moves that you had to stick your butt out over a 40-50 foot drop, and a fall would have been really really bad. Nabeel even mentioned that he was a bit sketched out by the exposure at this point. It was probably at this point that Nabeel and I came up with a new term that we used the rest of the trip when we were talking about a scary part in the climb. We started talking about all scary parts as “major pucker moves” or “major pucker portions” of the route. What we were indicating by this was not the pucker that you get from eating a lemon, but the pucker that you get from the other end of your anatomy when you are scared. Pucker became our new heavily used word.We scrambled up the rest of the ridge, and reached the summit in about an hour 20 minutes from the bottom of the red gully, maybe 3 and a half hours from leaving camp. We spent about 15 minutes on the summit, celebrating our climb, and celebrating a very successful first class 3 climb for Nabeel. We were also celebrating the fact that we were feeling outstanding, and that the weather was looking great. We were very confident that we would also see the summit ofCrestone Needletoday.I should mention that we never did hear from Beau the night before. And, we hadn’t seen him in the morning either. But, when I checked my phone on the summit, I had a message from Beau. He had wandered by our camp a little after 6 am. We had been gone an hour or more at that point. He was planning to go ahead and just do Humboldt, then meat us back at the camp later. I called him and told him that we’d made the Peak, and were planning on hitting the Needle also. And, we made plans to meet up later.After break, Nabeel and I headed back down the ridge, and the red gully. That larger group of 12 people never did make the summit while we were up there. It turned out that they were and Outward Bound group, and that the group leaders were setting “fixed ropes” along the ridge, in order to protect those more exposed sections. For us unnecessary, but if I were leading a group of kids that I was responsible for, I was definitely consider fixed ropes. Hope fully the kids made it up successfully. It would surely have been a great experience for them. Nabeel and I passed them on the way back into the gully. We continued down the gully. The down climb of the gully was pretty easy and fun. As we got towards the bottom it started to get a little old though. We made it back down to the bottom of the gully, down to the lake, across the valley, and back upBrokenHandPassin around 2 hours. At this point it was 11 am, and we needed to make a call if we’d attempt the Needle. Our plan was to see how we felt, and rest for 30 minutes, check the weather and then make the call if we felt ok. We felt so good that we only took a 5 minutes break at the top of the pass, and started towards Needle.The summit of Needle is less than a mile from the top of the pass, but it is a long arduous climb to get there. There isn’t much easy stuff between the top of the pass and the summit of Needle. The initial part is clear trail, heading towards the east and west gullies. Along the trail we ran into a single guy that we had met on the Peak. He was going down from the Needle and had successfully done the traverse. His comment was, “I did it, but I’ll never do that again.” We also passed our hiking buddies that we met on the pass in the morning. They had also done the traverse. They had a very different impression of the traverse, and were both very excited that they had done it. There are a couple of pretty stiff moves required to get down to the bottom of the east gully. They look worse than they really are though. We started up the east gully which was very solid, similar to the red gully onCreastonePeak. I’d say that it was slightly more exposed though. As we climbed the east gully we kept looking for the cross over point to the west gully. We knew that this was the tricky point in the climb. Ultimately we found the cross over point. It was well marked by some well placedcairns. The climb up to the cross over point was definitely the crux of this route. I’d rate it a solid class 4 section. It was short, but pretty tricky, and very exposed. I was wondering how we would feel about the down climb. Nabeel and I made it over to the west gully without issue though. The west gully was much smaller (less wide) than the east gully. A hundred feet or so up the west gully, it opens back into the upper portion of the east gully. Roach’s description sends you back over to the upper portion of the east gully for the finish to the summit. The description is much clearer in Roach’s third edition. But, we missed that part, and kept going left, up the west gully. It was very solid, but also very exposed. Nabeel and I were both feeling the “pucker” on this section. It was definitely approaching class 4, and it was sustained for 300 or more feet. Neither of us were having any serious issues with the up climb, but we were not relishing the idea of down climbing this section. Ultimately we reached the summit and were elated, but not looking forward to that down climb. The fatigue was finally starting to catch up to us. We reached the to in about and hour 30 minutes. There was another group on top, and we quizzed them about that up climb. They didn’t seem phased by it. At this point we noticed that other people were down climbing the upper east gully. That gave us some relief that we could find a slightly more leisurely way down.We spent about 15 minutes on the summit. We could have stuck around a while, but we really wanted to follow others down, just to make sure that we stayed on route during the descent. Plus, it was getting late in the afternoon at this point. We followed the other group down the upper east gully. The upper east gully was definitely an easier way down. It was loose, but easy. Our biggest dilemma was not knocking rocks down on the bigger group ahead of us. We did a good job avoiding that. As we go to the point where we are suppose to cross back over to the west gully, we caught and passed the other group. At this point, we’d gather enough confidence about the route finding, and were good on our own. We actually had the right idea from the top, and would have been fine. At the crux down climb the rest of the lead group let us pass by. Being only two of us, we could make tracks faster, and we were going pretty good. We made the sketchy crux move from the west gully back to the east gully. It wasn’t so bad after all. A bit of a “pucker.” And, we descended the remainder of the east gully. At this point, I let Nabeel lead. The funny thing is that every time that I let Nabeel lead, he took us along the toughest parts of the route. Nabeel had led us left up the class 4 west gully to the summit. And, during this downclimb of the east gully, Nabeel led us down a pretty wicked, solid class 4 downclimb that skipped the lower section of the east gully. It saved us probably 30 feet of elevation drop, but it was wicked. It was cool too though. So, for a bit of “pucker” just let Nabeel lead. We made the tricky up climb back to the dirt trail section, and followed the trail back to the top of the pass. We made it back to the pass in around an hour 25 minutes.Once back at the pass, we didn’t stick around, but made haste down the pass, towards camp. Descent down the pass, on theSouthColonyLakesside just sucked. I didn’t remember it being so nasty and loose on the ascent. And, seriously, it could be very dangerous, especially if you were tired, and weren’t careful. We made it down the loosest section in about 20 minutes, but it was a long 20 minutes. From there, we followed the trail, through the boulder field, and eventually back down to the lake. Make legs and feet were pretty tired at that point. Nabeel seemed to be going pretty strong though. We both wanted to be done. We ultimately made it back to camp in just under and hour. It still amazes me that it can take almost as long to get down as it does to get up some of these class 3 climbs. Overall round trip was around 9 hours 45 minutes.As we got back to camp, we noticed that Beau had arrived, and setup his tarp cover. Nabeel and I had plans to pack up and get back to the car. But, after seeing that Beau had setup camp, we decided to go ahead and stay the night. We’d hike out the next day, and take a break the rest of the day. Then, we’d hit Blanca and Ellingwood on Monday. I think that we checked into our tents around 7 pm. We all needed the rest. Nabeel and I with the Crestones day, and Beau with a heavy pack in and Humboldt. A night to sleep in.Sleeping in when you in a tent outside, means 6:45 am. We started stirring just before 7 am. We were mving and packing stuff up over the next hour. We were rolling around 8 am, with those HEAVY packs. I couldn’t imagine that this would be true, but heavy packs on the downhill sucked almost as much as it did on the grueling uphill. We again took the pack trail shortcut. We made it back to the intersection with the main trail in about 40 minutes, and in another hour we were at the upper trailhead, parking lot. I should mention at this point that I was dealing with some potential blister issues on the feet. The previous two days hiking had created some minor blisters, which were starting to act up a bit on the downhill. I had one on the ball of my left foot, on one the second toe, right foot, and a couple around the right heel. They were tender, but didn’t stop me. Although, Nabeel and Beau were definitely pushing the lace on this hike out. Luckily, we got into some interesting discussions on the last section, which took my mind off the blisters. After about a half hour break at the upper parking lot, we made it down to the lower parking lot in just under an hour, with total decent from camp in just over 3 hours, including the break.I dropped my pack at the car it relief. After sitting down for a breather, I took off my shoes to check out the blister situation. Most were okay, except for one of the right heel ones. It was nasty, and I was certainly going to need to lance it before any more hiking. We were planning to get a hotel tonight, and it could wait until then.Overall another great hike, I could live without the heavy pack-in, but it just motivated me to look into getting to some more lightweight gear, and to reconsider my backpacking strategies. Talking with Darrin and Otina had also given me some ideas on how to cut the weight. Nabeel was definitely the rockstar that I knew he would be. Sad for not getting to hike a summit with Beau again, but very glad we got to hang out and hike together. Next up: Blanca and Ellingwood, on Monday, from the lower trailhead, as a day hike.
Splits:
Hike in
Left at around 6:15 am from lower 2wd TH.
Hike to camp with full backpacks
Hike 1:09:48
Break 11:46.27
Hike 58:43:32
Break 19:08:09
Hike 1:25:30
Total hike to camp
4:04:56
Approx 1 hour rest and setting up camp
To summit Humboldt
2:08:06
On summit
36:48:82
Return to camp
1:20:19
Total for day
8:10:11
From GPS
Nothing for hike to camp since battery died
4.37 mi
Day 2 – Crestones
Apprx 5:15 start
To broken hand pass 1:05:33
Break 4:30.96
To base of red gully 48:40.76
To summit of CP 1:11:17+11:43.58
On summit 12:45.13
To BHP 9:28.12+1:49.55
Break 5:38.18
To summit CN 1:30.41
On summit 15:21.13
To BHP 1:25.19
To camp 56:24
Total 9:47:19
7.68 mi
4617 ft elevation
Hike out
6.47 miles
Camp
11747
TH
8814
To intersection of bottom old pack trail and main
37:45.32
To upper parking
1:06:36
Break
28:43.03
To lower TH
54:43.48
Total
3:07:47
