Teakettle Mountain

August 31, 2009 by thejourneyishome

Pete and I left the front range after work on Thursday and made our way to a campsite not far from Salida. Rain clouds and thunderstorms were hitting the southern Sawatch peaks but mostly moved south of us.

After a night of howling coyotes we woke to a clear dawn and drove over Monarch Pass and on to the town of Crawford. We were hoping to climb an intriguing looking formation called Needle Rock.

We’d heard it was loose, which I’d hoped was exaggerated, but looking at the peak from the parking area to its east I remarked “Pete, we’re about to try and climb a cairn.”

The approach up very unstable talus and bushwhacking through patches of scrub oak left me with few kind thoughts towards Needle Rock.

After traversing the north side of the peak we finally spotted a piton marked with white cord and knew we were at the base of the 5.7 route to the summit.

I thought long and hard about attempting this choss pile, and eventually decided to get a closer look. The rock was certainly loose, but not that bad on the lower-angle initial portion of the pitch. After clipping the piton (which flexed a little worryingly, but seemed solid) I made a few steps up until I reached a point where every possible handhold was loose or a hollow sounding flake.

Not willing to commit, I carefully down climbed and then told Pete I was backing off this route. Once down, we looked at a few other ascent options, but all looked bad. As a consolation prize Pete drove us up nearby Youngs Peak via the 4wd access road.

The sideshow over, we headed to Ouray and grabbed a campsite on the road to Yankee Boy Basin before returning to town for beer and dinner and the arrival of Piper and Dan. On Saturday morning we woke in the dark and packed up for the drive up Yankee Boy.

We started hiking right at 6:15 am, about as early as we could have started with enough light to navigate by.

Our objective was Teakettle Mountain, Colorado’s 98th highest peak and one of those requiring some technical climbing to reach the summit. Our route went up steep grass and then scree slopes aiming for a flat shoulder near the spire called “Coffee Pot”.

Once there we had an impressive view of Teakettle.

A cairned gully led us below the ridge cliffs off Coffee Pot.

Then a better-than-expected traverse took us across the talus and scree on a climbers trail to the Black Gully.

The Black Gully looked frightening from afar, but was much more moderate than anticipated.

A short class 3 scramble led out of the gully and onto easier terrain above.

Soon our approach took us to the base of the summit tower and the handle formation of the teakettle.

The harnesses, rope and climbing protection came out and I started up the easy 5.3 climbing, being wary of a few loose blocks. Two cams and I was on the summit and clipped into the rappel webbing.

Piper quickly followed the route, then Dan. By the time Pete came up and cleaned the pitch it was getting quite crowded on the little summit.

We tossed the ends of the rope down and I went down first. Dan had a bit of a live refresher course on rappelling, but I was below giving him a belay and Pete and Piper triple checked his setup.

After we were all down Piper ran (okay, safely walked) to the handle for a photo.

Then we traversed back to the Black Gully, dropped down it’s complete length and continued down very loose scree and talus yelling “Rock!” whenever a stone went flying down.

Thankfully the awful loose slope ended and only a steep grass descent remained.

We returned to Ouray where Piper introduced us to Mouse’s Chocolates and then drove around the San Juans towards Telluride to meet up with John, Renata and Dave at the Mill Creek Trailhead. Our next goal was Dallas Peak, another technical summit and Colorado’s 100th highest.

Our plan was to backpack in to a basin at 11,300 feet, but from below it looked dry. So we camped near some water at the much lower 10,000 feet meadow. Our 8th member, Dave (aka Hoot) arrived just as it was getting dark with a few cans of Fat Tire.

A couple short bouts of rain broke up the night accompanied by an elk bugling. Rain at 5am delayed our start and the weather wasn’t looking good for a large group on this complicated peak. We hiked up in the dark on a great trail through aspens and found that there was a little flow in the creek up high.

We reached the turn-off on the trail to ascend towards the peak and I let everyone know I didn’t think today was our day for Dallas. Maybe with a small group I would have been comfortable rushing against the weather, but certainly not with 8 climbers.

The Dave’s were willing and able to continue, so I lent them my small rack of cams and stoppers plus some additional webbing. The rest of us took off to have a look at “T0″ – the basic named given to a nearby peak. Piper and Dan decided to return home and Pete and I followed John and Renata for a ways before deciding that our hearts weren’t in the climb (me) or we weren’t feeling well (Pete).