Willow Lake is breath taking!

To start your trek up Challenger follow the trail up the north side of the lake, it will be well marked with cairns.   The trail just above the goes through a section of thick sometimes shoulder height vegetation.  Be sure to have your water proof gear on for this section as the vegetation is very soggy in the morning!

1st time Kit Carson comes into View

Make your way to the North end of the lake, you will cross over Willow Creek near the top of the water fall.  This is where the fun begins! Follow the wide spread cairns up Challengers north face.  The north face climb was the most challenging part of my day by far, its about a mile up and around 1800ft of gain.  The rock was very lose and there was a lot of scree surfing on the way down later in the day. Once you gain the ridge it’s pretty easy sailing up and over Challenger Point to Kit Carson Avenue.

North face of Challenger!  Hardest part of the day!

Challenger Point Summit.  Kit Carson Peak in the foreground, Crestone Peak in the background.

From the summit of Challenger Point Kit Carson is impossible to miss.  You will continue past Challenger and meet up with Kit Carson Avenue, a nice wide ridge that will take you around the back side of Kit Carson.  If you like exposure you can walk closer to the edge, if not hug the wall!  Below is a time-lapse of my travels over Kit Carson Avenue.

The end of Kit Carson Avenue.  The beginning of another climb up a gully.  Do not miss Kit Carson Ave on the way back out!

When you reach the end of the avenue you will be at the bottom of another steep gully.  Zigzag your way up this gully and hang a left at the top. There are multiple trails going up this gully so just follow random piles of rocks.

Clouds chased me up the gully.

Kit Carson Peak Summit

Once you reach the top of the gully take a left and summit is only 5-10 minutes away.  I spent about 15 minutes hanging out on Kit Carson taking in the spectacular view of Crestone Peak and the surrounding Sangre de Cristo’s!

Clouds filling up the gully.  Very ominous feeling.  I think I inhaled half a cloud on the way down.

The trek back down to Kit Carson avenue was interesting to say the least. The valley had filled in with clouds and I managed to completely miss the avenue by about 600 vertical feet. This is the only way back over to Challenger unless you feel like tackling some class 5 climbing.  I started to get a little worried when I started to not see cairns anymore, at one point I realized I was no where near being on the right path so I made the decision to turn around and up climb until I found a cairn or something resembling the avenue back over to Challenger Point.   Eventually I found my way back to Kit Carson avenue and made my way back to north face of Challenger.  The decent down Challenger is almost more challenging than the ascent, there was a lot of slipping and sliding!  Over all it was a really fun day full of spectacular mountains, lakes and waterfalls! I am really starting to like the 14ers that take a little bit of route finding rather than the walk up walk down 14ers.

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This 14er adventure started out on Friday night with a lengthy drive down to the Sangre de Cristo range.  I left Denver around 6:30 in the afternoon, the trip to the Zapata Falls trail head was a little over 4 hours with Culvers and gas stop.  After reading all of the horror stories about Lake Como approach I made the no brainer choice and went with the less traveled Zapata Creek approach.   I was pleased with the choice in trail head as soon as I pulled into the empty parking lot.

I have to summit that?!

My day started out just a little before 4 in the morning.  I felt like I was in Jurassic Park as hiked along single track through very lush green almost jungle like forest.  A good chuck of my hike below tree line was spent removing spider webs from my face!  The trail was typical below tree line Colorado hiking, switchbacks engulfed in wild flowers that followed a mountain stream.  As you round one of the last switchbacks Ellingwood Point comes into view and I will admit I was a little intimidated.

Perfect place to camp just before Ellingwood!

Once you break tree line the trail turns into a trail that is obviously not used much through a mountain meadow.  This meadow continues until about mile 6 when you run into South Zapata Lake.  If you plan to camp on this trip you will have a lot of options near the lake.  The trail becomes a little bit hard to follow in places, but if you stick to the East side of the Lake you will join back up with it and really have no other choice than to hike to the base of Ellingwood Point.  You will be tempted with a variety of couloirs to scramble up, I took the advise of the wise folks over at 14ers.com and took the C2 Couloir.  I met 2 other guys at the bottom of the couloir contemplating the best  route up.  They kindly let me go ahead and gave me a head start to avoid me showering rock down on them.  If you take it slow and pick your footing wisely C2 is really not too hard to climb up.

C2 couloir

A look back down the C2 couloir

Fake Blanca AKA Little Bear!

As soon as you step out of the couloir you are presented with incredibly amazing views.  The 1st thing that came to my mind was holy crap that is a hell of a hike over to Blanca.  Honestly that view messed with my mental game, I spend the rest of the hike up Ellingwood feeling frustrated and pressed for time to get both summits in.   As I got closer to the summit of Ellingwood the rest of the mountain range came into view and I realized I had been looking at Little Bear across the way and not Blanca.  Seeing Blanca was still a little intimidating, but I was done being frustrated at that point because I knew I would get both 14ers in as long as storms did not roll in.

One of the 1st views you get of Blanca

Ellingwood Summit Selfie!

I took advantage of the beautiful weather and took a 30 minute PBNJ break on the Summit of Ellingwood.  One of the 2 guys I met at the bottom of the C2 couloir met me on the caught up to me at the summit, apparently his buddy called it quits back on the ridge before the final push to the summit.  We got to chatting and decided to tackle the ridge over to Blanca together because it looked a little sketchy.  Looking back I feel a little silly, I spend good chunk of time chatting it up with this guy but never got his name so I will call him random Randy.  Me and Randy started down the ridge across Blanca, route finding was a little difficult and its very easy to get yourself into some very exposed areas if you do not stick to the trail.  After about 30 minutes of scrambling between carins I started toying with the idea of not re summiting Ellingwood and just following the Lake Como route back out to the highway.  Randy decided to turn around about half way in between Blanca and Ellingwood, and I really did not want to tackle that ridge alone so I made the decision to take the Lake Como route back out.

Blanca Summit Selfie!

Eventually I met up with the standard route up Blanca which was a relief.  The standard route is pretty easy to follow with a couple of different options as you get closer to the summit, but its very similar to the final push of the other 14ers I have been on.  The summit of Blanca was full of loud obnoxious high school kids taking pictures in their underwear so I took my summit selfie, told myself the ridge over to Little Bear was way above my skill level, and made my way back down the standard route.

Little Bear from Blanca

When the standard Blanca route met back up with the trail back up Ellingwood I solidified my decision to go down the Como Lake route, I mean it can not be that much farther right?  Believe the hype about the Como Lake road, this was the worst decision I made all day!  It was a 7.5 mile hike on babies head boulders, this turned my 15 mile day into a 22 mile day.  The total round trip mileage would have been about 30 if the random guy(not Randy) I talked with earlier in the day recognized me on the road gave me a ride the last 8 miles!  So if you are crazy and want to get 2 14ers and a ultra marathon in follow my route!  This route would work out nicely if you wanted to knock out Ellingwood, Blanca, and Little bear in the same day and you were able to coordinate a ride between the trail heads.

A look back up the valley {Blanca and Ellingwood}

The day was full of spectacular views, a lot of hiking, and some genuinely nice people!  I had Mt Lindsey on the schedule for Sunday but my IT band and knee were pissed after a 22 mile day so I decided to drive back to Denver and tend to my wounds!

The route I took.  Follow at your own risk!

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