Recently the Crested Butte Mountain Guides had posted some photos showing a lot of details of the “Guides Route” that they take clients up frequently. I’d also run into one of their guides on top of Crestone Peak and asked a few questions about the difficultly, approach and gear required. Pete was enthused about the climb and my brother, Grant, was free so we paid our 15 dollars to reduce the approach to a 5 minute hike and rode up the Silver Queen lift.
We had an excellent view of the ridge to preview the route as we neared the top of the lift (the green line is where we scrambled un-roped, while the red is where we climbed while roped up).
Possibly unique in the US – the lift provides an Alps-like approach and we only had to traverse west from the top through a short band of trees then across a talus field to the ridge.
At a flat spot on the ridge we put on our helmets and harnesses then scrambled up class 2/3 terrain.
From all the photos posted, I easily recognized the slab pitch with the overhanging block. I stopped just below this and Pete and I tied in at the ends of the rope while I put my brother about 15 feet ahead of Pete. I explained to Grant how he’d clip through any protection I left and let Pete clean it and how they’d have to communicate to keep slack to a minimum between them.
The pitch was fairly easy, minus one mantle move that could easily be avoided by staying further left. Finding a good anchor was more problematic, but I ended up slinging a large block that appeared more solid than everything else around.
Grant decided not to commit to the mantle move and headed further left to avoid it, but quickly arrived at my belay with Pete right behind. The ground above us relented to loose class 3 blocks, so I coiled much of the rope and led up with the others following.
We skirted a few large blocks on their east side and the climbing kept to an easy 3rd or 4th class for the most part.
We started to hit a few large blocks and flakes that we could climb over, so I would place a few pieces of protection, then belay after the difficulties as Pete and Grant tackled the hard bits.
None of the climbing was sustained, and climbing on the shortened rope was definitely the most efficient way to move if the leader was willing to mostly solo the short sections of 5.5/5.6.
The “diving board” flake was one of the more interesting features on the route.
We also did a bit of climbing through a long v-slot on the left of the ridge crest and then had a fun mantle back onto the small knife-edge.
We hit a little more 5.easy climbing higher up just before nearing the summit.
The summit itself was crowded with hikers, several ravens and quite a few flies that made staying on top unpleasant. Here’s a tip – if you don’t feed the ravens they won’t hang out on top pooping and attracting flies.
We quickly packed away the rope, helmets and gear and started down the trail for a quick descent back to the lift.
In the end, we climbed the ridge in about 2 hours, after a 5-8 minute approach from the top of the lift. I only took a belay for the start of the climbing (on the slab with the overhang), the rest I generally free-soloed and placed gear to protect my seconds then would do a hip belay or belay off a real anchor (depending on what was available) for the short harder bits. The climbing never seemed harder than 5.6 and was never sustained. Trying to pitch-out this climb with full rope lengths could be a mess with all the loose blocks and rope-snagging features. A light rack to a #3 cam is plenty, with some long slings or cordelletes for building anchors off large blocks.
Oh, if only Kyle had been there……………