Colony Baldy

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Colony Baldy

April 12, 2009 by thejourneyishome

Pete and I drove down to the Horn Creek trailhead in the Sangre de Cristo mountains on Friday. Clouds were moving in but we caught a view of tomorrow’s objective, Colony Baldy – a 13,705 foot peak just north of some famous 14,000 foot peaks.

Kevin joined us just before we turned in with a planned 6am departure. As it turned out, we were only 5 minutes late pulling away from the gate as we started up the Horn Creek trail for a rendezvous with the Rainbow trail. The Horn Fork was mostly snow free and we found only a little snow on north aspects of the Rainbow trail at first.

We soon stopped for an enforced break when we caught sight of Colony Baldy rising above the trees.

The Rainbow Trail soon took us on a tour of shaded north aspects and we took turns postholing through the deep snow before eventually fighting our own inertia and strapping on the snowshoes we’d been carrying.

About 8:10 we reached our furthest south on the trail and took another quick break before leaving the trail and heading straight up slope.

A wet snow was falling but at least the trail breaking wasn’t too arduous.

As we reached treeline the wind picked up and our breaks got noticeably shorter as we all needed to keep moving to stay warm. Heavier gloves and additional layers were also donned.

The wind seemed to increase as we climbed higher and pushed on through conditions that verged on whiteout from time to time. Occasionally the ridge we followed had a distinctive form we could walk besides, but as we got higher the ridge broadened out and we just moved upwards as best we could.

We made several brief stops to change leaders and check our elevation or see how far the GPS claimed we still had to go. Just before noon we stumbled upon the summit cairn and cheered with the idea that we could now face away from the wind and hustle back to the trees.

Visibility oscillated between 100 feet and 20. Kevin lead us down the indistinct portions of the ridge navigating via GPS. Pete and I followed while flexing our numb toes and trying to restore life to our fingers.

Thankfully we were soon back at treeline and could relax in warmer and less windy conditions. I know I was dehydrated from not being able to stop and drink and desperate for calories.

All the fresh snow and wind had nearly filled our morning’s tracks leaving just slight depressions where each footstep had been. Still, we could easily enough follow our morning’s ascent route and we dropped back down to the Rainbow Trail in a quick 30 minutes of hopping and sliding down fresh powder snow.

Between the fresh snow and our new inertia of keeping the snowshoes on we hiked back out on the trail about half way with our extra flotation until it was really not necessary.