Culebra Peak, CO

Objective:  
Summit Culebra Peak (14,047') - successful.
Summit Red Mountain (13,908') - bailed due to altitude sickness.
  
Date:  
September 23, 2004
Photogallery:  
Party:   Mouser Williams and 13 other fourteenerworld.com members.
Summary:  
The second trip up Culebra after the new management of the Culebra (formerly Taylor) ranch opened it back up for recreational use. Successful summit but I bailed on the neighboring centennial 13er because I was feeling pretty bad at the top.
Route:  
From Los Alamos, NM, 501 to 30 to Espanola. 68 north to Taos, then ??? north to CO 159 to San Luis. Followed the approach instructions in Roach. Drove to fourway, then hiked the standard route though for some of it there was no obvious trail and some improvising was done. Descended more or less the same route.
Noteworthy:   My 13th fourteener.
Probably the least-impacted fourteener in Colorado.
Lessons Learned:  
A long time spent at altitude gives me a headache and makes my judgement sour.
Getting access to a peak that only has your climbing group on it and is in an unspoiled area can be worth a lot of money.
Wednesday, September 22
After work I went home and packed up for my trip the following day. In light of this as-of-late rare opportunity to climb Culebra Peak, I had taken Thursday off as a vacation day. At 8:00pm I left Los Alamos for the relatively short drive north to the ranch entrance. I managed to find the Taos bypass from memory and that saved me some time. I arrived at the gate at 10:30pm to find a number of cars already there and some tents. I got into the back of my truck and got plenty of sleep before my 6:15am alarm.

Thursday, September 23
I awoke to bitter cold and the sounds of a few other people getting their breakfast made and gear assembled. I had to put on all of my wind gear and warm clothes while I cooked my breakfast. We all signed our waivers and finished preparing and then started waiting for the ranch hands who were supposed to open the gate for us at 7:00. Compared to most of my fourteener ascents, this was a nice chance to sleep in.

Unfortunately, the ranch hands never showed up and we ended up having to call them on a cell phone. By the time they got there it was past 8:00am and we were all freezing from standing around for a couple hours. We all drove our cars and trucks up to the ranch house a couple miles up the road. There we gave our money to the ranch hands and handed in our liability waivers. We jumped into three vehicles and drove up to Fourway (11,200') on an excellent dirt road.

Some of the people opted to get out of the vehicles a ways before Fourway to preserve their 3,000' net elevation gain statistic, but I think that is silly so I drove all the way to 11,200'. Had I known how long the trip was going to take me, I'd have driven up the road to its top at about 11,700'.

The initial segment of the hike is easy, following the road up to 11,700. From there, there is a trail that proceeds for a few hundred meters and then disappears. At that point, people seemed to go their own ways. Most of the hardcore climbers went straight up the gradient to the ridge, whereas I followed what I felt Roach's description of the trail was and contoured around the corner of the mountain and slowly climbed up to he saddle behind the ridge. This was relatively easy going, although the freezing wind made it a little irritating. The saddle marked approximately the half-way point of the hike (in terms of time) and was at an elevation of 13,200'.

From the saddle, it was just a long ridge of boulder hopping up to the false summit, and then a quick jaunt over to the actual summit. However, for some reason I was really not on my game and I was feeling really sluggish. By the time I got to the summit I was nauseus and had a headache. I'm not sure what my problem was; I was drinking plenty of water and had eaten some food at the saddle.

Anyway, I was the last person to arrive at the summit by about 10 minutes and everyone was there when I got there. We all took some photos including some group shots with Cardboard Rodney Dangerfield (see gallery). The four people who were not going to attempt Red Mountain returned back down and everyone else went over the ridge to Red. I, however, was feeling like crap so I elected instead to take a nap at the summit. When I woke up, I could see that everyone was leaving the summit of Red and I decided to head back down to the vehicles myself. The trip back took forever. I was really moving slowly and I kept making navigational mistakes. I think my judgement was impaired by my condition. I once found myself having to do a class 2+/3- couloir traverse because I had followed the wrong ridge down towards the saddle.

Because I was starting back from a closer position than everyone else, I managed to not be the last person back to the cars, but only by a bit. I was basically with the last group of four that arrived at fourway. The entire trip took me 8.5 hours including about an hour and a half spent on the summit. Whatever it was that made me sick went away as soon as I got down to low altitudes; I was able to eat a big meal at Sonic in Taos without a problem. I was home by seven and found myself arriving to a large BBQ being thrown by my roommate.

Written by Mouser Williams on 2004.09.27