After climbing Little Bear the day before, we were ready for a nice relaxing climb of Blanca and Ellingwood. We woke up at about 06:00 and spent some time filtering water, having some breakfast and gearing up (or gearing DOWN) for the climb. We started up the road at 06:40.
The route follows the road until its end at Blue Lakes, then works its way up a good trail past headwalls and more lakes. Crater Lake is the highest lake in this series at 12,900', then the trail winds up past grassy ledges and solid talus to the saddle between Blanca and Ellingwood at about 13,800'. From there you follow Blanca's rugged ridge southeast to the summit. This trail was in good shape and easy to follow; it does split up into several segments when making its way up the headwall below Crater Lake but each segment seems to work okay.
I left my trekking poles in a crack in a rock near the saddle and we climbed up Blanca's ridge, reaching the summit at 09:30. The view from Blanca's mighty summit were as incredible as those from Little Bear. It was good to see Little Bear from Blanca and see the 5th class traverse between the two. After a short rest and a snack we left the summit and headed back down for the saddle. Yes, I remembered to pick up my poles...
We decided to try to stay on the ridge from the saddle to Ellingwood Point, as much as possible anyway. At first the climbing was a lot of fun, the ridge was narrow and exposed but very solid. We were able to make a few 4th class and lower 5th class moves negotiating the ridge, but soon ran into a deep gash in the ridge with no easy passage. We backtracked a little and bypassed the gash form below. Here we met up with a cairned trail and we took that most of the way up the slope.
I thought I was almost to the summit so I raced up the last of the slope, only to find I was on a false summit. We had to descend a little to bypass a cleft on the ridge between the false summit and the true summit, and we topped out. I don't remember the time we summited but it took us about an hour from Blanca. We enjoyed the views from the summit of Blanca and Little Bear and descended after a short break.
We tried to find a more direct way down from the summit than the trail we found on the way up, but it was steep and loose and we soon decided to take a descending traverse toward the saddle to try to meet up with the trail again. We contoured below the trail on a generally unpleasant descent and finally met up with the trail again. An uneventful hike brought us back to camp at 13:30 or so. We had a bite to eat and quickly packed up camp for the backpack out.
1:15 hours and I reached the Jeep. Dark clouds were forming over the Sierra Blancas but we had no rain until we hooked the sway bar links back up and put air into the tires. Driving along 160 the weather looked nasty in the mountains we had just left - our weather window was perfect for our assault on Little Bear, Blanca and Ellingwood. We stopped for a burger and beer in Walsenburg and made it home at about 21:00.
The Blanca group was fun climbing, with the exceptions of the backpack up
to Lake Como, the scree gully up to Little Bear's west ridge and the descent
from Ellingwood. I climbed the high peak remaining on my list at the beginning
of 2002, and finished all the 14ers in the Blanca Group. All I have left in
the Sangre de Cristos are the Crestones and Culebra, and I hope to finish
those up this year.
