Ellingwood Point Trip Report 05/17/2016

Peak(s):	Ellingwood Point - 14,057 feet
Date Posted:	05/17/2016
Date Climbed:	05/04/2016
Author:	lodgling

Exterior Decorating
So I'll never be one to complain about powder skiing, but after months of training and weeks of waiting for the 14er ski season to start, the constant snow in April was starting to wear on me. I had my eye on trying to finally finish the Sangres. Since Crestone Needle was out of the way as of last year, the amount of snow to fill the lines wasn't as much of a concern to me as was getting to spring snow conditions. But in April, the Sangres kept getting pounded, with reports of storms being measured in feet rather than inches. Nevertheless, based upon Schralp's report from 4/24, I started paying attention to conditions around Lake Como to see if I could sneak in an Ellingwood trip before a planned trip to Chicago Basin over the first weekend in May. When the CBasin plans were scrapped based upon the weather forecast, I took the opportunity to hit the last good weather window of that week to head to the Blanca group. With the amount of snow that area had received, I was heading into the trip with caution and a mantra to turn around if I didn't like what I saw. I expected to find that the basin had undergone a big wet slide cycle the day prior and hoped to get in and out before a second round of the same. But the hike on Lake Como road is what it is and I knew it would be a tough mental exercise to convince myself to turn around after all that effort if conditions didn't cooperate. On the drive down on Tuesday afternoon, just as I was leaving the town of Fort Garland, I came upon a strange scene that I was having difficulty processing in real time as I sped up to 50mph. There was a paved (I think?) bike path on the north side of the road and a ten-ish-year-old boy that appeared to be walking his bike. The car that was in front of me by about 50 yards pulled over by the boy and the driver immediately got out. Simultaneously, the car coming at me in the other lane pulled over. My attention was drawn in the direction of the approaching car for a second and then I turned my attention back to the road. Just then, I saw an animal running towards my car next to the road and it suddenly darted across in front of me. I had to slam on the brakes to avoid hitting a mountain lion that from head to tail was as long as the lane of traffic was wide. I nearly missed the lion as my belongings flew through the car and gathered at my feet, on the dashboard, etc. As I drove away, excited to have had my first lion encounter (and glad to be in a car for it), I put together that the boy's encounter with the lion must have been a far different experience and he was likely saved by the passing driver that pulled over to intervene. In any event, I told myself that whatever conditions I encountered the next day, I could turn around and chalk the trip up as a success for finally having seen a mountain lion! I reached the familiar parking spot at about 8800 ft. and went around back to get in and sleep. Uh-oh. The bookshelf I was supposed to take out and put in our garage was still taking up the entire back of the truck. Oops. I quickly removed the bookshelf and did some "exterior decorating" of Lake Como Rd. I was asleep by the time it was dark, with the alarm set for 12:30am and the prospect of being able to claim the (likely) "first tele descent of Ellingwood after decorating the roughest road in Colorado with a laminate bookshelf." I hoped to be hiking by 1:00am, reach Lake Como by 4:30am and the upper basin by 5:30. Since I didn't expect a fully transitioned snowpack up high, I wanted to be skiing by 9am at the latest, even if it meant skiing refrozen snow on some aspects. I prefer an edge I can trust on hard snow over the slop. Hiking the road was efficient and I left the skis + boots on my back as long as possible. There was going to be plenty of skinning on this day and I was in no hurry to make my feet heavier. My general rule of thumb is that I'll stay in trail runners until I posthole three steps in a row or five times in the space of ten steps. Or something like that. I hit substantial snow before the creek crossing, but I knew that after the crossing there would be bare sections of road ahead due to the aspect. I finally succumbed to too much postholing about two switchbacks after the creek crossing. The skinning was efficient and I was happy to have my "light" ski setup on my feet. In the dark, I lost the road cut about 1/4 mile before the lake, but was able to do an ascending traverse below numerous debris piles from the day or two before to find the lake. Having navigated the terrain above the lake heading into the upper basin just last year was helpful and without much difficulty I found myself in upper basin as the sun began to rise. Sometime I wonder if the only reason I engage in this activity is for the dawn: First light on Little Bear: Good to have Lake Como to myself. And there was plenty of snow up high, looking pretty sun affected and locked down from my vantage point below. I have thought a lot about Ellingwood and I think that the SW couloir is one of the coolest looking lines out there. Unfortunately, it is known for not being connectable from the summit. One possibility I have pondered is skiing the S face from the summit for 200 ft. or so (i.e. however far below the top of the SW couloir is from the summit), reclimbing the peak and then hiking down to the top of the SW couloir and skiing that out. I had heard that the ridge leading to the summit was sketchy and if I were going to downclimb it, I'd prefer to have ascended it first. So I decided to climb the SW couloir and see where it led. The snow above about 12,800ft. was a supportable crust (on skis). I tried skinning as long as I could hold out, using ski crampons near the end and finally losing the battle to gravity. Now the real work would begin. The crust was not supportable in ski boots and underneath was heavy spring snow that had not transitioned. I ended up heading for rocks where I could, taking the following route up the SW: In order to utilize some rocky terrain near the top, I reached the ridge short of the shoulder at the top of the SW. I'll say that the ridge hike had me pretty gripped. Unconsolidated, corniced winter snow on the left, slightly consolidated cross-loaded spring snow on the right and a fine line in between the two made progress tricky. I didn't get any photos of the exposure on the left, but it is Sangres-like for sure. The camera finally came out when I reached the security of the shoulder. The Crestones looking great: As it turns out, the SW couloir tops out at only about 60ft. short of the summit elevation. It took me 3 hours of "booting" to find that out. In spite of becoming a Steve House fan-boy back in August 2015, that effort had taken its toll on my strength. I had told myself on the way up that if there randomly turned out to be a "line" from the summit down to the SW, it may be worth checking out in case it would constitute a first descent. There was, in fact, an "extreme billy-goating" line that someone could have put together without removing skis. But it was not in the cards for me today. Alone and having just experienced a little more exposure than I had bargained for on the ridge, I quickly climbed the remaining vertical to the summit and put thoughts of that line out of my head. I also was done and done with any more booting so a reclimb -- even for only 60ft. -- was not going to happen. Since I had met my deadline of skiing by 9am, I would head back down the S face for a tour-de-Ellingwood. Blanca looking familiar: The route up to the summit and my route back down: I knew that portions of the ribs dropping from the summit were E-SE facing and would need to be handled with care. But that terrain also holds the best line from the summit. I felt out the snow on my way across the ridge. The S face was still unaffected by the sun, the E facing was almost too ripe. If I waited any longer for the S face to loosen up, the E face was probably going to peel away if touched. I'd have to ski a mixture of the two if I wanted to touch any of the E facing terrain. OK, ski edit #2. For some reason my go bro took a photo burst initially until I recognized that fact and switched it to video. Consider taking a Dramamine before viewing: I was able to ski back down to nearly the creek crossing at which point the walking and introspection began. I reached the car exactly 12 hours after leaving it. Always a proponent of LNT, I removed my exterior decoration from Lake Como Rd and brought the bookshelf back to its rightful place in my garage, very happy to get the 14er season started off right and glad to be done with that road (at least until the day one of my sons begins asking about it). Thumbnails for uploaded photos (click to open slideshow):

Exterior Decorating

So I'll never be one to complain about powder skiing, but after months of training and weeks of waiting for the 14er ski season to start, the constant snow in April was starting to wear on me. I had my eye on trying to finally finish the Sangres. Since Crestone Needle was out of the way as of last year, the amount of snow to fill the lines wasn't as much of a concern to me as was getting to spring snow conditions. But in April, the Sangres kept getting pounded, with reports of storms being measured in feet rather than inches. Nevertheless, based upon Schralp's report from 4/24, I started paying attention to conditions around Lake Como to see if I could sneak in an Ellingwood trip before a planned trip to Chicago Basin over the first weekend in May. When the CBasin plans were scrapped based upon the weather forecast, I took the opportunity to hit the last good weather window of that week to head to the Blanca group.

With the amount of snow that area had received, I was heading into the trip with caution and a mantra to turn around if I didn't like what I saw. I expected to find that the basin had undergone a big wet slide cycle the day prior and hoped to get in and out before a second round of the same. But the hike on Lake Como road is what it is and I knew it would be a tough mental exercise to convince myself to turn around after all that effort if conditions didn't cooperate.

On the drive down on Tuesday afternoon, just as I was leaving the town of Fort Garland, I came upon a strange scene that I was having difficulty processing in real time as I sped up to 50mph. There was a paved (I think?) bike path on the north side of the road and a ten-ish-year-old boy that appeared to be walking his bike. The car that was in front of me by about 50 yards pulled over by the boy and the driver immediately got out. Simultaneously, the car coming at me in the other lane pulled over. My attention was drawn in the direction of the approaching car for a second and then I turned my attention back to the road. Just then, I saw an animal running towards my car next to the road and it suddenly darted across in front of me. I had to slam on the brakes to avoid hitting a mountain lion that from head to tail was as long as the lane of traffic was wide. I nearly missed the lion as my belongings flew through the car and gathered at my feet, on the dashboard, etc. As I drove away, excited to have had my first lion encounter (and glad to be in a car for it), I put together that the boy's encounter with the lion must have been a far different experience and he was likely saved by the passing driver that pulled over to intervene.

In any event, I told myself that whatever conditions I encountered the next day, I could turn around and chalk the trip up as a success for finally having seen a mountain lion!

I reached the familiar parking spot at about 8800 ft. and went around back to get in and sleep. Uh-oh. The bookshelf I was supposed to take out and put in our garage was still taking up the entire back of the truck. Oops.

I quickly removed the bookshelf and did some "exterior decorating" of Lake Como Rd. I was asleep by the time it was dark, with the alarm set for 12:30am and the prospect of being able to claim the (likely) "first tele descent of Ellingwood after decorating the roughest road in Colorado with a laminate bookshelf." I hoped to be hiking by 1:00am, reach Lake Como by 4:30am and the upper basin by 5:30. Since I didn't expect a fully transitioned snowpack up high, I wanted to be skiing by 9am at the latest, even if it meant skiing refrozen snow on some aspects. I prefer an edge I can trust on hard snow over the slop.

Hiking the road was efficient and I left the skis + boots on my back as long as possible. There was going to be plenty of skinning on this day and I was in no hurry to make my feet heavier. My general rule of thumb is that I'll stay in trail runners until I posthole three steps in a row or five times in the space of ten steps. Or something like that. I hit substantial snow before the creek crossing, but I knew that after the crossing there would be bare sections of road ahead due to the aspect.

I finally succumbed to too much postholing about two switchbacks after the creek crossing. The skinning was efficient and I was happy to have my "light" ski setup on my feet. In the dark, I lost the road cut about 1/4 mile before the lake, but was able to do an ascending traverse below numerous debris piles from the day or two before to find the lake. Having navigated the terrain above the lake heading into the upper basin just last year was helpful and without much difficulty I found myself in upper basin as the sun began to rise.

Sometime I wonder if the only reason I engage in this activity is for the dawn:

First light on Little Bear:

Good to have Lake Como to myself. And there was plenty of snow up high, looking pretty sun affected and locked down from my vantage point below.

I have thought a lot about Ellingwood and I think that the SW couloir is one of the coolest looking lines out there. Unfortunately, it is known for not being connectable from the summit. One possibility I have pondered is skiing the S face from the summit for 200 ft. or so (i.e. however far below the top of the SW couloir is from the summit), reclimbing the peak and then hiking down to the top of the SW couloir and skiing that out. I had heard that the ridge leading to the summit was sketchy and if I were going to downclimb it, I'd prefer to have ascended it first.

So I decided to climb the SW couloir and see where it led. The snow above about 12,800ft. was a supportable crust (on skis). I tried skinning as long as I could hold out, using ski crampons near the end and finally losing the battle to gravity. Now the real work would begin. The crust was not supportable in ski boots and underneath was heavy spring snow that had not transitioned. I ended up heading for rocks where I could, taking the following route up the SW:

In order to utilize some rocky terrain near the top, I reached the ridge short of the shoulder at the top of the SW. I'll say that the ridge hike had me pretty gripped. Unconsolidated, corniced winter snow on the left, slightly consolidated cross-loaded spring snow on the right and a fine line in between the two made progress tricky. I didn't get any photos of the exposure on the left, but it is Sangres-like for sure.

The camera finally came out when I reached the security of the shoulder. The Crestones looking great:

As it turns out, the SW couloir tops out at only about 60ft. short of the summit elevation. It took me 3 hours of "booting" to find that out. In spite of becoming a Steve House fan-boy back in August 2015, that effort had taken its toll on my strength.

I had told myself on the way up that if there randomly turned out to be a "line" from the summit down to the SW, it may be worth checking out in case it would constitute a first descent. There was, in fact, an "extreme billy-goating" line that someone could have put together without removing skis. But it was not in the cards for me today. Alone and having just experienced a little more exposure than I had bargained for on the ridge, I quickly climbed the remaining vertical to the summit and put thoughts of that line out of my head. I also was done and done with any more booting so a reclimb -- even for only 60ft. -- was not going to happen. Since I had met my deadline of skiing by 9am, I would head back down the S face for a tour-de-Ellingwood.

Blanca looking familiar:

The route up to the summit and my route back down:

I knew that portions of the ribs dropping from the summit were E-SE facing and would need to be handled with care. But that terrain also holds the best line from the summit. I felt out the snow on my way across the ridge. The S face was still unaffected by the sun, the E facing was almost too ripe. If I waited any longer for the S face to loosen up, the E face was probably going to peel away if touched. I'd have to ski a mixture of the two if I wanted to touch any of the E facing terrain.

OK, ski edit #2. For some reason my go bro took a photo burst initially until I recognized that fact and switched it to video.

Consider taking a Dramamine before viewing:

I was able to ski back down to nearly the creek crossing at which point the walking and introspection began. I reached the car exactly 12 hours after leaving it. Always a proponent of LNT, I removed my exterior decoration from Lake Como Rd and brought the bookshelf back to its rightful place in my garage, very happy to get the 14er season started off right and glad to be done with that road (at least until the day one of my sons begins asking about it).

Thumbnails for uploaded photos (click to open slideshow):

Comments or Questions

ltlFish99

Excellent report
12/16/2020 10:58pm

That was a great report. I truly enjoyed the video.
Makes me really want to replace my AT setup with a new one.

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