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Crestone Needle - 14,197' Broken Hand Peak - 13,573' Milwaukee Peak - 13,522'
unnamed point 13,161' (north ridge of Marble Mountain)
Date Climbed - 7/25/2010 Climbers - doggler (and emcee smith, Kerry from LA, and Zollie from OK on the Needle)
RT milage - ?
RT gain - ?
RT time - 9 hours
What a weekend! This TR will focus mainly on the 'traverse' I did from Crestone Needle to Milwaukee Peak.
I did the Peak-to-Needle traverse (jackass-style) with crossfitter and hollamby on Saturday the 24th. (emcee smith joined us up the Peak but went back to camp) Crossfitter promises a TR on our fun time soon...if he ever quits climbing mountains!
By the way, that kid(crossfitter) is an animal. hollamby and I topped out on the Peak's eastern summit just as he reached its northeastern summit. We watched him take on the exposed descending traverse like it was nothing. Unfortunately, that wasn't the hardest climbing crossfitter would do on Saturday...
emcee smith and I had driven up to the TH together and had set up camp next to each other. He felt a little regret for not climbing the Needle upon re-ascending Broken Hand Pass from Cottonwood Creek like Cathryn403 had done. I really had no firm agenda for Sunday, so I decided to go up the Needle with him and maybe add on Broken Hand Peak on the way down. My TR starts from this point.
As emcee smith and I descended the gullys of Crestone Needle, I decided I still had some legs under me and decided to add on to an already enjoyable morning. Before emcee and I split off at Broken Hand Pass, I shared my plan with him: to try and stay as true to the ridges as possible from the pass until point 13,161', which directly overlooked our campsite by the old 4WD TH. He topped me off with water, wished me luck, and we parted ways.
Getting to the top of Broken Hand Peak was quick and painless. Furthermore, the view of the surrounding peaks was astounding. Throughout the day, the incredible vistas would be a common theme.
Some difficult up-and-down scrambling followed, as I attempted to stay on the ridge between Broken Hand Peak and Milwaukee Peak. While there was virtually no rain, no lightning, no thunder, and little wind, the one weather difficulty that was present all weekend long was the variable clouds/fog that swept up through some of the valleys and covered whole ridgelines on a whim.
Large spires made traversing the ridge tricky. Escape to either the South Colony drainage or the upper Cottonwood Creek drainage were sketchy at best, meaning I had two directions in which I could choose from: forward or reverse.
When not on top of the ridgeline, I found myself more on the left (South Colony side) more than the right. Most of the scrambling was up or down...very little ridge-walking. I put in a few tricky moves, but for the most part, the climbing was class 3-4. The challenge I had was trying to figure out if I would be able to keep the ridge the whole way.
Once I hit the Broken Hand/Milwaukee saddle, it became clear that I wasn't going to maintain the ridge. To my left was a possible escape into South Colony. (right where the road turns into trail) To my right, though, was a better option. I vaguely remembered something from Coopers scramble guide about the Milwaukee Pass trail. Supposedly, if you do the Milwaukee-Asilado traverse, you either have to retrace your steps (and need to rap down Asilado, and hit some tough terrain 2x) or you can drop into upper Cottonwood Creek and take a trail back up the the pass. (a notch just a few hundred feet below the top of Milwaukee Peak) I decided to drop down into the drainage and see if I couldn't find either that trail or a better way to get back up to the ridge after the major difficulties.
Eventually, I DID find a faint trail! By this point, I was quite happy for it, as I had been scrambling for a few hours straight and appreciated the mental break.
It's always difficult to give up hard-fought elevation, but once I dropped back down into the basin, I actually made some forward progress! Eventually I approached the notch that signifies Milwaukee Pass.
At this point, I still wasn't quite sure what I was signing up for. I recalled Cooper's book mentioning a ledge, but beyond that I knew I would be on my own.
I defer here to a TR done by Kevin Baker last week for pictures of said ledge. DEFINITELY worth checking out, as it's more exposed than any standard 14er move, and I was too busy getting over it to take any pictures. His description of that stretch is spot-on, too.
From the pass to the summit took a good half hour. I found this stretch to be some of the more difficult sustained climbing I have done, but was happy my routefinding led me up the last pitch without incident. The view, even with the fog and clouds, was indescribable. Upper Sand Creek Lake appeared pristine from where I sat. Makes me wonder why South Colony gets so many more visitors...just because of a few peaks, eh?
Both Broken Hand Peak and Milwaukee Peak had jam jars as their summit registers. Broken Hand's was empty, but Milwaukee had two small pieces of notebook paper in it. I was surprised to see just how few entries had been made. Someone had signed in the day before I was there, but the latest entry besides that was from '08. I wonder what percentage elect not to sign in on these less-traveled peaks? There were a few from 2006, and they all made mention of SAR doing a gear recovery for a body on Pico Asilado. Gulp!
I refocused and carefully downclimbed Milwaukee's summit block. At this point, I split east and followed an excellent trail until I got to the Milwaukee-Marble saddle. Again, this was welcome hiking after scrambling up and down Milwaukee. The saddle is where I regained full visibility of South Colony below.
In no time, I was atop 13,161'. Had I been a little more ambitious, I would've made it over to Marble Mountain, but I finally could spot precip off in the Wet Valley and decided not to push my luck with a fairly rotten descent still in front of me.
About that descent. I must rewind here. This was my sixth trip to the South Colony area. I often times, upon approaching and setting up camp by the old 4WD TH, would scramble a bit up the scree wall to the south of the TH to catch a good view of sunset on the Needle. On Friday, I did the same, but ended up a bit higher than I had been before. So high, in fact, I realized I was well over two-thirds of the way to the ridge. I also realized that while it wouldn't be pleasant, one could make it the entire way up or down if careful with which lines one took. Part of the reason I even decided to attempt this traverse was knowing that once I got to here, I would be able to descend in relative safety. (I also hate that last hour or so of trudging back to camp - this kept it fun until the very end!) I'd lie if I said it was easy; there was one cliff band I had to pass through that required both some routefinding and some solid class 4 downclimbing.
It took about an hour to descend those 2,000'. I eventually dropped in right by our campsite, where emcee had been waiting patiently for a couple of hours.
emcee had heeded the warnings of all you porcupine whisperers out there and had barricaded the dogglermobile. I'm not sure what a porcupine would want with a 96 Maxima; there were plenty tastier vehicles in the parking lot!
Each part of the day had its own challenge, but I'm glad I did this circle tour. I got to see the Crestones in an entirely new light. I never get sick of climbing the Needle; it's such a fun mountain! Milwaukee Peak is not for the faint of heart. If you can put down the "must complete my 14er checklist" needle for just a second, you should consider Milwaukee from the Music Pass TH.
Thanks a ton to emcee smith, crossfitter, and hollamby for the time spent in some great mountains. Thanks to Kevin Baker for his Milwaukee/Pico Asilado TR. And thanks to the weather gods for keeping the Sangres so dry this weekend!
And of course, thank YOU for reading.
Thumbnails for uploaded photos (click to open slideshow):
Now thats how you spend a day in the S.Colony region, always wondered how that worked out. Love those views of Broken Hand and the Needle from Milwaukee. JackB from summitpost put up a badass picture of that exact view in the morning.
Great route, Sean. I wouldn't have had the guts to be that far from escape in the event of hair-raising weather. But I have to say, like Sandy, I was a little frustrated around here when the weather turned out to be much better than forecast - the first major stumble the Pueblo NWS office has made all summer long. Still, I got some great rock climbing in here locally, so I can't complain.
Can't wait to hit some peaks with you boys next go-round. ...I think.
Someone already said it but I can't think of another word for that route. Congrats on a great day in the mountains, and thanks for sharing it with us. Photo 23 is a great new (for me anyway) look at the Needle, KC, Columbia et al.
That was me that signed the register on Milwaukee the day before. And one (very likely) reason that it might not have been signed since 2008 (before me) was that it wasn't anywhere to be found when I reached the summit. All that was obviously visible was the summit cairn. It was very windy on Saturday when I reached the summit and I decided to build a wind break next to the summit cairn. As I picked up a few rocks, low and behold, I found the jar with the summit register in it. After building the small (but adequate for one) windbreak, I placed the jar right in the wind break (as shown in your pic) in a much more visible place in the hopes that more may find it. See, it worked!!!
Found the summit register just a couple days ago and added a few cairns because we were confused for a bit. Only two other groups signed in this season. Great trip report. Kept trying to look at your route down from the actual viewpoint and it didn't look fun.
Doggler: I can add some info about the body recovery on Pico in 2006. I was part of the first SAR team that went in to recover the climber who had fallen. We had to climb over Milwaukee to get to Pico. The Climbing Captain had put up a fixed rope on the ledges of Milwaukee because he thought other teams would be following us. Instead, a military Blackhawk helicopter brought the other teams into the Deadman Creek drainage and dropped them off, making the fixed rope superfluous. That rope was the ”gear” that had to be recovered. Recovering the body, we got caught in a terrible lightning/hail/rainstorm. We had to tie the body off dangling from a cliff. All of us were wet. Rained so hard, right through gore-tex. Waterfalls everywhere there was rock. No exit. No way to climb out over wet rock. I got hypothermia. We were all glad to see the Blackhawk return to rescue the rescuers. It had to land in Great Sand Dunes NP to wait out the storm, and got in trouble with the Park Service for doing so. We all cheered when we caught sight of the chopper when it came back for us. Our lives were in danger. I took the first flight out because I was the worst off. Everybody got out OK. The next day, the body was successfully lowered into the drainage and flown out via the chopper. (I wasn't there, recuperating.) The day after that, a team went in to recover the fixed rope. That is the story. I believe I met you on the El Diente/Mt. Wilson traverse. My buddy had secured his helmet to his pack with a nylon tie. I had to cut it loose, and it fell, and somebody from your group yelled ”helmet” just like you are supposed to do for falling rock. Kind of funny, I have to admit. Take care and be safe. We never found the register when we were on Milwaukee as the first team. Of course, we were preoccupied. I got out my binoculars and spotted the body across the drainage. The fallen climber's partner had marked it with the fallen man's purple rain jacket. It was the purple I spotted.
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