The South Colony Lakes area is being terrorized by a very large male mountain goat. Estimated weight 250 lbs. Camp at your own risk. The goat, clearly spawned by the Devil himself, has no fear of humans, and has no need for sleep. Has been known to knock down tents, paw the dirt near campsites and has a taste for certain human byproducts. Beware!

          
Fotos ©2002 by John C. Maki

Bob and I wanted to knock off the Crestone group, preferably in one fell swoop. He had already climbed Crestone Needle and I had climbed Humboldt Peak, and neither of us had climbed Crestone Peak. We hoped to finish the Crestones in two days in a blitz from the South Colony Lakes.

The plan was a lot like that of our climbs of Little Bear and Blanca/Ellingwood. We would drive down Monday morning, drive the infamous 4x4 road to the gate, backpack in the remaining mile and a half, and evaluate the weather. If the afternoon weather looked good, Bob would head off for Humboldt and I would climb the Needle. If the weather was iffy we'd get an alpine start and try to knock them all off in one day, probably Crestone Peak first then split to get Humboldt/Needle. We were hoping the weather would cooperate Monday afternoon.

We started off from the south Denver metro area at 09:00, and headed down I-25 to Pueblo. From there we followed 96 southwest across the Wet Mountains to Westcliffe, had lunch at Karen's Cafe (not bad) and drove the short distance to the lower parking lot of South Colony Road. Here we aired down the tires and disconnected the anti-sway bars in anticipation of the rough road to follow. South Colony Road has the reputation of being one of the worst roads in Colorado. To be sure, the Como Lake Road to the Blancas has more difficult obstacles (impossible for mere mortals), but the South Colony Lakes road is over 5 miles of rough 4-wheeling with few breaks. 45 minutes and 5.3 miles later, we were across the last creek and parked in the lot just before the gate. My Jeep TJ with 3" lift and 31" tires had no problem with ground clearance, but it was a bone-jarring ride. We saw some stock 4x4s at the parking lot so it is passable, but I'm sure they took a little buffeting in the undercarriage.

The 1.4 mile backpack to South Colony Lake took little time, and we quickly set up camp and geared up for our climbs. Bob left for Humboldt and I headed for Broken Hand Pass at 15:00. I was expecting an unpleasant climb to the pass but it wasn't all that bad - a well-cairned, established trail covered at least half of the way up. The rest of the climb was just steep dirt and some loose scree and a couple 2+ sections near the top. I topped out at 12,900' 45 minutes after my start.

Foto ©2002 by John C. Maki

From here the route does an ascending traverse around to the south couloirs of the Needle. The trail is easy to follow, and glimpses of the Needle peeked out from behind some rocks along the way. 30 minutes later I was near the main couloir to the summit, or thought I was. The south face of Crestone Needle is complicated; I was expecting to see 2 main couloirs leading toward the summit but there were numerous smaller couloirs to confuse me. The "trail signs" didn't do much to enlighten me; an arrow made of rocks pointed the way to... somewhere. I wasn't sure if the arrow was meant to indicate "the" way up, or maybe someone's nifty shortcut - or maybe the arrow was pointing the way down the trail to the "real" way up the couloir. Its meaning was rather vague to me, but I started climbed the ledges directly above the arrow. This seemed too steep to be the correct route, so I downclimbed and walked down the trail a short distance.

This time the route looked right: a large couloir rose up from the trail to unknown heights, looking steep in places but very passable. A small trickle of water ran down the middle of the couloir. I started up on solid rock, the great conglomerate the Crestones are famous for. I came across a choice to continue up the main couloir or split off to the right. Roach and Dawson talk of traversing into a second couloir to the west, then back into the eastern couloir as they merged together near the summit. I had read several reports that switching couloirs is not necessary as the eastern couloir is not too difficult. I had therefore resolved to stay in the eastern couloir to the summit. My problem is that I mistook the small eastern couloir as the eastern couloir mentioned in the guidebooks. I soon realized my mistake as I had to pull a 5th class move to get to a higher ledge, and came across an old rusty piton hammered into a crack by some mountaineer of old. This was clearly not the route I wanted!

Traversing around to the west I could see what I did wrong, the question was how to fix it without losing lots of elevation. I could see a possible traverse point above me maybe 50', so I climbed toward that on that knobby rock. The holds were great but I was getting into harder terrain that I no longer felt comfortable downclimbing, so I decided to head down and find a safer passage into the main couloir. This accomplished, I climbed up and soon noticed a cairned route to the west, no doubt leading into the western couloir some people switch to. Continuing up the eastern couloir I found the reason why people switch: a dihedral of perhaps 75 degrees between smooth rock on the right and knobby conglomerate on the left, varying in steepness up to 55 degrees and maybe 100' long.

          
Fotos ©2002 by John C. Maki

Climbing this dihedral was a lot of fun, stemming between the two sides when I could find holds on the smooth rock and keeping both feet on the knobby side when I could not. Soon I was nearing the end of the couloir and I knew the summit must be near, though I did not know exactly where. I saw lot of cairns all around and many faint goat trails, and I decided to follow one of these paths up a face to the highest point I could see. There were some tricky spots here, but I made it to a ridge and summited a few steps later at 17:15. It turns out the better way would have been to stay in the couloir until it meets the sky then follow the ridge west to the top. My route was consistent with my twisted habit of making climbs harder than they need to be.

Foto ©2002 by John C. Maki

The weather appeared to be holding but it was hard to say what it was going to do next. Clouds were in all directions from the summit but it was reasonably clear above me; the wind kept changing directions so it was impossible to predict what would happen. With that in mind, and the thought of a cold can of beer waiting for me at camp, I left the summit after 15 minutes.

I briefly considered checking out the western couloir on the descent but with my questionable routefinding skills on this climb I thought it best to stick to the main couloir all the way back to the traverse trail from Broken Hand Pass. I cautiously crept down the dihedral and after a while saw a line of cairns leading off to the east. I followed these and after a little scrambling dropped down to the arrow I found earlier! I still don't know exactly how that happened but I guess the arrow marked someone's shortcut.

Halfway to Broken Hand Pass I heard a couple booms of thunder off to the west so I picked up my pace and made the pass at 18:15. The trip down the pass wasn't too bad and I strolled into camp at 18:45. I had that beer I'd been looking forward to, cooked some dinner with Bob, and watched a big mountain goat follow a camper around on the north side of the creek. We thought this was pretty funny, and went back to dealing with dinner. When I looked toward the guy's camp again I saw that the tent was knocked down. The guy came toward us with his backpack on, and I asked if that was his tent - he assented that the goat had charged his tent, and that he was coming our way.

This goat was huge - I don't think I've ever seen one that big. He sauntered up to our camp, and we moved our food away. The goat walked around camp, circling the tent, coming to within 10' of us. Since you can't really know what's going on in a wild animal's head, we were wary of this guy and kept him in sight. He would go to a clearing in the trees and lay down, pawing up dirt and throwing it on himself, rolling around, generally behaving like a beast. Long after wearing out his welcome at our camp he strolled down the trail to bother a father and son from Florida. I heard them yell and blow a whistle at the intruder (well, I guess we people are the intruders) to little avail. Eventually the goat waded a shallow part of the lake to the guy from Virginia's camp, where a very wary camper had pitched his fallen tent again.

Okay, so we weren't sure what this goat was up to. He seemed benign enough, maybe just looking for a handout, but why did he charge the other camper's tent? A 250 lb goat with 12" daggers affixed to his skull, not to mention sharp cloven hooves perfect for edging on cliffs, was not something I really wanted to tangle with. When he came to our camp a second time I started looking for weapons - a human equipped for hiking is not really much of a threat to a large animal. There were no large branches around because we were right at treeline. I had some trekking poles but they probably would've just made him mad - and I didn't want to make him mad... The best thing going for us was a large pile of rocks. After his second or third round of our camp I chucked a few smaller rocks toward him, and this seemed to get his attention. He got the message and wandered off again. Now I didn't want to do anything to hurt this guy, I realize that this was his home and all, but I didn't want to get gored in my sleep either. Bob and I started to speculate whether goats are nocturnal - we'd both seen them all during the day from morning to nightfall and figured they must sleep at night. Right.

I was just dropping off at around 22:00 when I woke to Bob saying "you hear that?". Distinct hoofsteps pacing around the camp, getting closer to the tent. He circled the tent, while I wondered how long it would be until he tired of us humans and stomped our tent just for fun. It was a little scary. The steps became quieter and quieter, then half an hour later I heard a semi-panicked yell emanating from another campsite. This would continue all night; somehow I grabbed a little sleep between episodes. At 03:30 I woke up and had to pee, but I could hear goat-boy hanging around outside and really didn't want to leave the tent. Nature always wins, so I put on my boots, grabbed my glasses and headlamp, and emerged from the tent under crystal clear skies. The goat was over by the cook stove and I tossed some rocks toward him to hopefully make him bother someone else. I didn't want to pee too close to camp but neither did I want to make a trek out of it; I was pretty certain this goat would take an interest. Apparently they like the salts and other minerals in urine, and this one was no exception. I left him to his business and crawled back in the tent to grab some more sleep before waking up to climb Crestone Peak...

Crestone Needle was a lot of fun but the routefinding was a little more complex than I anticipated, and the numerous misleading cairns didn't help. The moral of the story is if you find yourself in terrain more difficult than moderate class 3, you're probably off route and should consider backtracking. The rock itself is excellent, solid conglomerate and a joy to climb. Climbing in the afternoon can be risky but I saw no people on this route, and neither did Bob on Humboldt.