12 December, 2009

Introduction to Colorado 14ers


Me and all my puffy clothing and spiky parts are headed out to Colorado for a little winter climb of the Crestone Needle. I head first to Dallas to meet The Rev, and then we're making the drive up to Westcliffe, CO. The temps have been everywhere from -20 to +40 in the last 5 days. Weather is actually looking pretty good for our arrival; 9-36 on Monday's approach day, 16-38 for Tuesday's climb, 17-42 for Wednesday's possible Broken Hand Peak climb, and then similar to get out of there on Thursday. Of course, this weather is probably way down low on the mountain, predicted for Westcliffe or something. Ben and I have been staring at numbers from a weather outpost at South Colony lake over the last 2 weeks....trying to predict what kind of snow consolidation we are looking at. The truth is we really won't know until we get out there. CO snow should tend to be fluffy worthless powder (after all we aren't skiing, we need it to hold us to a slope, not be fun to carve turns in) but the warm up over the past 2 weeks may have helped to consolidate a bit. We have to do our climb early, or if not HAVE to, are electing to do so, hoping snow conditions will be better when its cold, and there will be less avalanche danger.

We'll both have Spot's on us...my page is here. I don't know what's Ben's page is...I'll add it if I can later, between both devices you should have a pretty good idea where we are. I'm hoping the 10 minutes standing on top make the rest of the cold cold suffering worth it. This is my first Colorado 14er. Pretty stupid eh? Always in just that much over my head.

2 comments:

Chris said...

Where are the pics man??

Ohio Robb said...

this is how often I blog....uh..very few pics because we did no climbing....got snowed outta the thing..6 hour approach turned into a very hard two days...not enough fuel to make that water for that long...pulled out. end of lame story.