Humboldt Peak, CO

Objective:  
A) Practice winter mountaineering skills for future alpine climbs (successful).
B) Summit Humboldt Peak (14,064') (bailed).
  
Date:  
January 11, 2003
Photogallery:  
Party:  
Robin Blume-Kohout and Mouser Williams
Summary:  
A sun-up to sun-down bushwack up the non-standard east ridge route of Humboldt Peak. Poor visibility and snow conditions made for a slow ascent and we eventually ran out of daylight without reaching the summit. We turned around at 12,750'.
Route:  
From the Colony Lakes access road at 9,100', we hiked up the road about 3 miles to 10,000'. From there we bushwacked due north up a steep slope to gain the east ridge. The remainder of the trip was spent following the long ridge to the west towards the summit.
Noteworthy:  
My personal highest hiking altitude of 12,750' (beating my previous high of 12,622' on Santa Fe Baldy).
My first time on crampons.
Lessons Learned:  
Crampons tear the crap out of gators.

Check the size of your tire chains when you buy them.

Check that your snowshoes fit your boots when you rent them.
We left Los Alamos after work on Friday and drove to Espanola for dinner at the Cowboy Family Resturaunt. During the drive from Espanola to Walsenburg, Colorado, we commented on how clear the sky was. The half moon did a reasonable job of illuminating the Blanca group as we passed by. The weather reports for the weekend were good, predicting sunny or partly-cloudy skies. This would be a nice change from Robin and my usual winter nightmare conditions when we go mountaineering, but it wasn't meant to be.

We got a cheap motel in Walsenburg and went to bed at 10:30pm, up at 4:00am. Walsenburg, despite being on the I-25 corridor, does not have any 24-hour resturaunts. We were forced to eat breakfast at a gas station - the Loaf & Jug (or, as we called it, the Loaf & Pinch). Microwave pizza and sausage biscuits - just what we needed before a big climb. Anyway we took off up 69 towards Westcliffe and got onto the Colony Lakes access road. As we drove it became clear that the sky was totally overcast and furthermore that the cloud ceiling was low... figures.

When we got to the foot of the mountains and the lower parking lot at 8,800', it was still dark but there was no snow on the ground. We put Robin's Trooper into 4WD and started up the Colony Lakes road. Not long after the beginning of the private property portion of the road, there began to be a light snow covering. Eventually, at about 9,100', the snow covering was a few inches and we encountered a steep piece of the road that was too slick for the Trooper. We stopped and put on the chains Robin had just bought at Autozone. It didn't take us too long to discover that they were about 800 sizes too big. There was no way we were going to get those chains to work, and without them we would be driving no further.

We parked at the foot of the steep section of road and got our gear on. As we did so, the sky brightened and the snow began to fall. We were on the move by 7:15am. The starting elevation of 9,100' made this a 5,000' ascent which is far more than I've ever attempted in one day.

Our original plan was to drive up the road as far as we could and then evaluate which route would be shorter - to hike up to the Colony Lakes and then take the west ridge up to the summit (standard route), or to leave the road at 10,000' and ascend the east ridge. Being that we were starting below 10,000', the east ridge was clearly the shorter path. The three miles and 900' of elevation gain we walked along the road was annoying.

When we got past the first stream crossing and to a short switchback, the GPS indicated that we were at 10,020' and it was time to ascend a steep slope to gain the ridge. We decided to put our snowshoes on for the bushwacking portion of this climb. In short order, Robin realized that his boots were too large to fit into either of the pair of snowshoes we had rented. They fit me, but after assessing the snow on the slope we decided that it looked like crampons would probably suffice anyway. We stashed the snowshoes in a bush next to the road and put on our crampons.

Heading north to the ridge line was a steep side-hilling experience that took just under an hour. The crampons were great when the footing was dirt or consolidated snow, but more often than not it was rocks under very little snow and the crampons just slid off. We relied on our ice axes for testing the ground for rocks and for catching our falls. Fortunately the snow wasn't very deep at all, so aside from the slips the going was relatively quick.

Once we got on top of the ridge, we turned due west and started heading towards the summit. By this time, the snow had increased and visibility was minimal. We could no longer see the ridge opposite the road. The ridge was broad and ranged in steepness from about 10 to 20 degrees. We had a couple miles of this to traverse before we got to treeline, and then another mile to get to the flatish summit area of Humboldt. Unfortunately, on top of the ridge the snow was much deeper and sometimes was so deep that we had to crawl over it because of our lack of snowshoes.

The going was not quick. We got to treeline at 11,800' just after noon. We were greeted with total whiteout conditions. There was nothing to see at all, and we had to navigate by instruments alone. This was made difficult by the necessity of taking a non-optimal path in order to avoid regions of deep snow.

At 2:30 we took a break to assess the situation. We had less than three hours of daylight left and we were at 12,750'. There was still 500' to go up before we got the the flatish area at 13,250'. From there it would be a one-mile traverse ending with another 500' of ascent to the actual peak. This entire traverse is done with a very sharp cliff to the north and a relatively steep slope to the south.

Our assessment was that we could probably make it to the summit while it was still light out, but we couldn't make it back past the cliff. We were both still capable of making the ascent, but with the now complete lack of visibility and the cliffs, we didn't want to test our [demonstratably bad] luck in the dark. We decided to turn back.

The downwards journey was predictably much easier. Getting to treeline took just 40 minutes - three time faster than going up. We were pressing to go as fast as we could during this section because the snow had picked up and was filling in our trail. We didn't want to have to deal with the added pain of having to navigate back with instruments when we could just follow our trail back, but we had to move fast.

The portion of the east ridge below treeline also went faster, though the snow wasn't as heavy here so the need for celerity wasn't as great. The hard part, it turned out, was the steep descent down to the road. Because there wasn't much snow here on the way up, our trail was covered by the time we got back and we had to invent our own way down. It ended up taking us longer to get down than it did to come up. We had to move a lot slower because our legs were shakey and the crampon/rock slips were bringing us ever-closer to twisting and ankle or a knee.

Once back on the road, the going was easy. We grabbed the snowshoes and hiked the three miles back to the truck, arriving just as it got dark at about 5:30pm.

And wouldn't you know it, when we got back to the truck, the snow stopped. There was even some small patches of clear sky. Looking up the valley, we got a breif glimpse of Crestone Needle poking through the trees.

We figured that this was just our curse and that the weather would be fine once we drove away, but it turns out that the break in the clouds was just a coincidence. While we were on the mountain, all of southern Colorado got hit with a big storm. The whole ride home was characterized by 25mph speeds, iced-over roads, and freezing fog that limited our visibility to about 20 meters. It took twice as long to drive home as it took to drive up.

On the up side, the steak house in Alamosa was open and delicious.
Written by Mouser Williams on 2003.01.13