The morning of the 26th of August was clear and surprisingly warm. My internal plumbing woke me up around 4am…. an hour earlier than I’d planned. As usual, I got a great night’s sleep, and was a bit tentative to open the tent flap, figuring I’d get slapped with cold mountain air. But, to my surprise, it was probably in the upper 50s…very pleasant. Also to my surprise, the skies had completely cleared from the previous day, and the stars were brilliant! I drug my ThermaRest pad out and just watched the stars for a while…can’t even recall the last time I saw the Milky Way…

I snapped out of my reverie as I heard Chris rustling around in his tent around 4:30. I started a low fire, and also hauled out my stove to get breakfast going…nothing like good hot oatmeal in the mountains! We decided to head out of camp right about 6am…just enough light out to see. Our third party member, Adam, had decided he’d had enough fun with the previous day’s Crestone Peak adventure, and decided to leave Kit Carson for us. So, at exactly 6:00, Chris and I hiked out of our camp, crossed the streams beneath South Colony Lake, and began our trip to Kit Carson.

According to the Roach guide, this route is the easiest from South Colony Lakes, but isn’t the easiest way to climb Kit Carson. And, let me tell you, it’s one hell of a long day! The first section of the trip is straightforward, although arduous…follow the well-maintained trail (thank you, 14er Initiative crews!) to the saddle between Humboldt Peak and Bear’s Playground…even though it’s well marked and maintained, the trail wastes no time in getting you there! It’s a steep grunt up the side of the hill, and it wasn’t long before we were breathing hard and sweating in the pre-dawn light. As the rich alpenglow brightened to full daylight, we crested the saddle, and quickly found ourselves surrounded by a family of elk! Must’ve been the day-care group…two adults and over a dozen young ones pretty much ignored us and wandered by, feeding on the perpetual buffet of alpine grass and lichens.

From this saddle point, the rounded bulk of Humboldt lies 0.7 miles to the east, and Kit Carson to the west. The next ¾ mile or so involves a ridge scramble to the wide, flat expanse called Bear’s Playground (no idea on that name). Again, here’s another area where Gerry Roach trivializes the route (in my opinion). The ridge scramble is Class 2 and 2+ in most areas, and discernable trails are scarce, although the route itself is pretty obvious. It took just over an hour for us to make that ¾ mile, and by then the day was warming up. Once at Bear’s Playground, the Crestones stand out impressively right off to the south and east…but Kit Carson is still not visible. Continuing west, the route (again, almost no trail here), does an ascending traverse of the ridge in front of you, and then you’ll find yourself in a small saddle below Kat Carson…. the 13,980’ eastern sub-peak of Kit Carson…just 20 feet from being it’s own 14er! Roach gives this next stretch a two-word summary “ascend steeply”…and that’s an understatement! The route climbs pretty much straight up the face, traversing a bit here and there. Climb over the visible false summit and the true summit of this subpeak is a short walk to the west. Once there, you’ll see your true objective, and like us, probably utter a few obscenities. The huge bulk of Kit Carson rears up over the subpeak, and you’ll realize that the work has just begun! The rest of the climb is where it gets arduous. You have to downclimb west off Kat Carson to the narrow saddle between the two peaks, and then follow indistinct benches and ledges to the summit…the whole thing is a Class 3 project.

For us, this was where we started running into problems. From Kat Carson, the trick lies in finding the right gully to downclimb. A hiking staff lodged in the rocks seemed to indicate the correct exit point, and we spent about ½ hour gingerly climbing down the steep rocks, but after downclimbing about 300 feet, we ran out of options…everything below us would require a rope at least! As we watched folks slowly ascending Kit Carson’s imposing-looking east face, the time factor became apparent to us…it was nearly 11:30, and we deduced that, even if we could easily find the right path down, it would be another hour to the summit, and then 3-4 hours back to camp at least. Quite frankly, nobody was too thrilled with the prospect of driving home in the middle of the night after a 10+ hour day climbing.

Reluctantly, we decided that it would be best to abort the climb…and we slowly picked our way back up to Kat Carson, toying briefly with the thought of trying to build a 20-foot cairn and making our own 14er! The hike back to camp took most of the early afternoon, and was uneventful. The fatigue setting in was evident, as we both stumbled a few times and turned an ankle here and there. Right about 3:00 we tromped back to camp, and hooked up with our 3rd party member, Adam, who had spent the day pretty much sunning himself on the rocks around the lake. 30 minutes later we had everything packed up and made the blissfully short hike back to the parking area in no time. Now, the only thing left was to bounce down the South Colony Lakes road and drive home.

So it wasn’t a completely successful weekend, insofar as I still need to bag Crestone Needle and Kit Carson…but better safe than sorry, and they’ll still be there next year, when I’ll try again for the rest of the Crestone group!