Mt. Sherman and Challenger Point.

The Wednesday started as so many do: promptly waking up at 7AM for a dentist appointment and an oil change. I had requested both Wednesday and Thursday off, and I figured that after my morning appointments on Wednesday I could take a few friends out to the Sangre De Cristo Wilderness to camp the night then climb Challenger Point and Kit Carson. The several friends I had reached out to and invited to tag along, including Tyler (the main writer of the blog who can tell the same tale I can with twice the wit and half the length) all found themselves unable to accompany my summit endeavors. In my disappointment, I decided I’d try to step up my game by adding another 14er, Mt. Sherman, into the mix. After all, the trailhead to Mt. Sherman was a mere twenty-mile delay from the main route to Crestone from Denver.

I monitored the weather incredibly carefully. I typically abide by the guideline of being on the descent or below timberline by noon. However, with close observation of the expected weather conditions around Sherman, I decided I could attempt it in the late afternoon of Wednesday. The drive was strange; there were thunderstorms all throughout the Front Range foothills along 285, and past Kenosha Pass I could see what appeared to be poor weather further West along the Sawatch range. The Mosquito Range, however, seemed deceptively calm. I made it to the Leavick Site around 4:00 PM (my Subaru could have easily negotiated the road above, but I decided to try to get the full experience of the trip by parking here). I put on my pack and took off at 4:08 PM. The way up the road was rather easy and the wildflowers were abundant. I could see a car parked near the gate nearly half a mile ahead, but no other signs of people (you know, despite the old mining stuff everywhere.) At the gate I ran into a cool cat from Kansas City named Travis, who was in Colorado to climb a bit. We talked very briefly, and I continued. I stopped and took my time to try to take a few pictures of the interesting abandoned mining paraphernalia.

I made great pace going up, only really taking a few moments to pause for pictures.

There were a few very small and easy snow crossings (one of which was entirely avoidable) going up to the ridge past the Hilltop Mine. On the southwest ridge, the wind started picking up, and I decided to pick up the pace. I summited at 6:08 PM.

The weather, seemingly only very partly cloudy on the way up, went from great to poor in a matter of the few minutes I spent at the summit. I was immediately almost engulfed in dark and scary clouds and with brevity I started making my way down.

By the time I was back to the Hilltop Mine area I felt safer, but there was definitely something brooding overhead. The sun was casting beautiful light onto the route below.

The marmots chirped and I continued on.

I met back up with Travis towards the gate where we talked and walked for a bit. He offered me a ride down to my car, but I figured I should finish what I had “started,” and declined. Waving a goodbye as he drove off, I finished the easy last mile or so and was back to my car at 7:45 PM.

Now it was time to drive to Crestone to get to the trailhead to Willow Lake. The clouds that had moved overhead after my summit of Sherman continued to grow darker, and soon the South Park Basin was covered by storm clouds. I had only been driving for ten minutes or so when the lightning started. Roughly ten miles east of the turn to 285 South, immense rains began pouring down at a rate quicker than my windshield wipers could keep up with. Lightning was striking around every other second and the rain turned into a thick hail.

Eventually the road was covered with almost half an inch of hail, making what should have been a summer night drive a wintery ice catastrophe. I pulled over for a bit before getting to Johnson Village where I pulled over again and put on the radio to try to find updates about the weather. Severe flash flood warnings were in effect for areas around Buena Vista, so as soon as the rain subsided just a bit I pulled away heading the opposite direction. Within twenty minutes I was back on clear dry pavement. The remainder of the drive to Crestone was uneventful and I arrived at the Willow Lake trailhead at 11:00 PM. Taking time to repack my trusty Osprey Aether, I set out on the trail at 11:17 PM.

I walked in darkness, with intermittent clouds frequently covering up the nearly blue moon. It was on the switchbacks about two miles in after paralleling Willow Creek Park, where the exhaustion began to set in. I began to stop frequently for breather breaks taking my sweet time to get to the lake. After crossing the headwall I began to hallucinate. I kept hearing noises behind me, turning around, and seeing animals that weren’t there and don’t exist. Like shiny blue ferret-rodent looking creatures. As off-putting as this was, I continued on. The temperature was dropping and it was roughly 2:00 AM. At the stream crossing at 11,250 feet, I managed to slip and get my feet soaked. My body temperature began to fall. Crossing through some high willows got my legs wet, and pretty soon my exhaustion had me inebriated to the point of really weird mood swings. It dawned on me that I had greatly overestimated my abilities of climbing while exhausted, and I decided that I’d try to make a makeshift tent out of my poncho to rest for a few hours at the lake. The final half-mile was grueling.

Finding a flat spot near the lake, I bundled up in the layers I had, opened up a few hand warmers, dispersed them over my body, and covered myself up with the poncho. I fell asleep within seconds. I slept for one hour. I woke up because it felt as if someone had forcibly taken the breath out of my lungs. I was shaking uncontrollably and my teeth were chattering faster than they ever had before. It took me a few minutes to realize what was going on, then it became apparent that my breath condensing inside the poncho that had covered me had put a layer of moisture over me, and the low temperatures outside had then made me borderline hypothermic. I got up immediately and started moving around, trying to get blood pumping through my body. This helped but I still felt awful. I could see the faint outline of Kit Carson high above me and thought to myself, “there’s no way on Earth I can push myself any further.”

I gave up.

Very disappointed in my judgment and myself, I slowly packed my things into my bag then started to descend. Towards the east side of the lake I stopped and waited for sunrise. Slowly, Kit Carson and the slopes up Challenger were illuminated, and then the sun began to paint the sky like a painter would with canvas. Brilliant hues of orange and pink graffitied the previously monochromatic sky. In awe I stood, watched, and took pictures. It was by far one of the most impressive sunrises I had ever seen. Shades of apricot orange caressed the mountains above.

Somehow the overwhelming overhead sunrise gave me new strength. I stopped my descent, turned around (a bit incredulous with myself), and started ascending again. Two climbers were maybe a quarter of a mile ahead of me and I tried to make pace with them. The standard slope up Challenger Point was demanding. I ended up falling asleep for a good twenty minutes about half way up, before the route became loose. Past the rock rib described on the 14ers website, snow runoff had made the ground dangerously wet, causing some muddy conditions in places. Looking back at the route description, I think I must have taken some alternate, slightly more difficult variation up to the notch; perhaps people had placed cairns in attempt to mark a route that avoided a bit of snow. Despite this, I did run into crossing over some steep snow twice, but certainly nothing of issue or alarm. I struggled hard to get myself up the slope with my sense of time completely backwards from exhaustion.

At the notch, I noticed some rotor looking clouds forming to the south (opposite of the picture above). I continued. The climb from the notch to the summit of Challenger would normally be very easy, but it seemed like hours to me. In minor disbelief I found myself at the summit at 9:25 AM. Kit Carson loomed over and I could see the two climbers from before almost at the Kit Carson avenue, but the weather was deteriorating, and NOAA had reported a high chance of thunderstorms past 10 AM.

It was borderline mental torture to be only a mile away from the summit of Kit Carson, and to turn around, but I was fairly content with having done Challenger (all things considered). I had noticed in my research of the two mountains that there is a new Class 4 route of Kit Carson marked on the 14ers website and I decided maybe I’d do that sometime in the future. I began my descent.

The way down was fairly uneventful, the descent of the normal slopes of Challenger was quite unpleasant, and time consuming. Soon enough, however, I was down at the lake. Taking time to hydrate, I admired the lake in full daylight. Though it had taken me hours to get up to the lake, the night/morning prior, I knew it’d probably only take me half the time to go down. I was taken aback by the large number of people I saw hiking up to the lake, I had no idea it was such a popular hike by itself. Towards the end, the clouds over Kit Carson I had noticed previously had turned into large rain clouds over the entire area, and by the time I was half a mile away from the trailhead, it began to pour. Though I was (and still am a little) disappointed about not summiting Kit Carson, I was glad to not be caught in that storm for a longer period of time. I took my time driving back to Denver because of my exhaustion. I stopped briefly in Crestone just to sight-see, and then waved a “see you later” to the Sangre De Cristo Range. I had pushed my limits as a climber over the past two days and I can honestly say I had given it my all. I learned a valuable lesson about sleep and only have it in me to look forward to returning to the Sangre De Cristo range. Until next time, stay adventurous my friends.