10/16/04 – "Montaņa Mujeres", Mount Adams & "Pico Guante" – East Slopes, West Ridge & Southeast Ridge, descent via South Crestone Creek

13.8 miles, 6300'


Erin and I continued our Sangre de Cristo blitz (15 new peaks in 8 weeks!) with a trip to visit the centennial 13er Mount Adams and two of its buttress peaks. Maybe this hike should be called the Adams Family? Mount Adams has spent a couple of years on our most-wanted list. It captivated us from Challenger Point and Kit Carson back in 2002, and all the times we've seen this pyramidal peak since then have left us drooling. Erin had just returned from a business trip on Thursday, so I asked her if she really felt like driving so far, so soon. Ever the trouper, she said she was ready, and we left early Saturday morning for the drive to the San Luis Valley. We started hiking up the Willow Creek Trail at around 6:30 a.m.

The morning went well, and we realized that we remembered little of our hike up Willow Creek two years ago. We had made the approach in 2002 in the middle of the night, and we recalled that an early afternoon thunderstorm had kept our minds very occupied during the return trip. We hiked up the switchbacks under Challenger Point's imposing and complicated north face and made it to Willow Lake after a two-hour hike. We took a break in the morning sun at the lake's shores before starting the trek north into the basin under Mount Adams. Here, Erin suggested that Montaņa Mujeres' east slopes looked dry and easy, a good alternative to that peak's standard east ridge route, and I agreed. (I heard the name Montaņa Mujeres used by a local from Crestone). The climb was on steep, grassy slopes, and seemingly each step revealed new views of Kit Carson Mountain and Adams. We gained Mujeres' southeast ridge crest at around 12,700', and from there we ascended the remaining 800' to the summit on gentle terrain. We sat back for a few minutes to enjoy our first view of UN 13,153 and our new perspective on Adams and the Willow Lakes Ridge while we basked in the awesome weather. The forecasts had called for high winds, but we were warm in the sun with very calm conditions.

While we descended to Mount Adams, we were struck by the amazing summits flanking South Crestone Lake. Shockingly, despite their stirring beauty, both are unnamed, and only UN 12,740 is a ranked peak – Point 12,980, which I'll refer to as West Mujeres, has only 160' of rise from its saddle with Mujeres. Their spire-studded masses are unique among the Sangre de Cristos. We haven't been everywhere in the Sangres by any stretch, but still we've seen no other peaks like them in our favorite Colorado range. Mount Adams' west ridge was very easy to start with, and we were making spectacular time up the mountain. I kept looking back on shapely Montaņa Mujeres, but I was most intently focused on UN 13,517 and the rest of the Willow Lakes Ridge. We can't wait to come back someday and make the traverse of that ridge from UN 13,580 to Obstruction Peak. As we neared Adams' summit, we could see the more distinguished side of UN 13,153. Erin said that peak's east side resembled a baseball glove, so sticking with the Spanish influence found in much of the Sangres, we took to calling it Pico Guante, which means Glove Peak.

Well, here we were, Adams' summit block. I had quiet reservations about the summit block after seeing it from the summit of Mujeres. The block itself was well beyond our abilities, so we had no choice but to traverse below it on inconsistently packed snow. Meanwhile, whereas we had experienced utterly calm conditions on Mujeres' summit, on Adams we were getting battered by the high winds that had been forecast for the day. We stayed as high as we could, but ended up in a tough spot where we faced a downclimb that we couldn't handle. I had Erin stay back while I explored our options, and I found a way for us to continue our traverse and reach the third-class scramble south of the summit. With the traverse behind us, the scramble on dry rock was a delight, and we reached the top of Mount Adams a little after 1:00 p.m. Here's a look at the Crestones, Montaņa Mujeres, and Colony Baldy from the summit. With the sun already casting long shadows and the high winds delivering an icy chill, we kept our summit stay short, thinking that we could be on the summit of Pico Guante within an hour.

Little did we know we'd spend almost all of that next hour just trying to figure out how to downclimb a hundred feet from the summit! With the winds tossing us around like rag dolls, we slowly crept our way north. Our plan was to use Adams' northwest ridge to reach Guante, but I honestly hadn't read the route description for this side of Adams in a while. When we cliffed out, I retrieved our Roach book and saw that he suggests a traverse using a ledge on Adams' east face. After looking around, we found this narrow ledge, but it was loaded with snow at a suicidal angle. We started looking around for other routes. There was one ramp that looked easy to descend. Unfortunately, it was nothing but the top of the very cliff band that we needed to penetrate, and this cliff band runs almost all the way back to the Adams-Mujeres saddle. Not very helpful! It was becoming clear that if we wanted to continue to Guante, we'd need to downclimb the cliff band directly. I returned to a dihedral that I had eyed several times in the last twenty minutes and decided to go for it. I wedged myself in and used some convenient footholds to lower myself gingerly. Nearer the bottom I couldn't find any more good holds, and the angled, snowy runout below me meant that I wasn't about to attempt to jump down the rest. With frozen fingers, I slowly maneuvered to the right side of the dihedral. Finally, hugging the rock, I lowered myself into a manageable spot and jumped down the last few feet. I took a few minutes to warm my frozen hands before turning my attention to Erin. She wedged herself into the dihedral, but her pack was getting in her way. I knew I could catch her pack if she dropped it to me, so Erin lowered it a good distance and let it tumble down the dihedral into my arms. Without the pack as a hindrance, Erin made quick time getting through the cliff band, and I gave her a couple of holds near its featureless base.

The winds were still quite strong, and they were whipping ice crystals into the air (and our eyes). Fortunately, because of the forecast for high winds, we had brought our goggles for the first time in months. This was doubly important for me because, like an idiot, I left my sunglasses at home. We spent a few minutes getting warm before we set off for the northwest ridge. It isn't the best sunlight for a picture, but in this shot looking back at Adams summit you can see the dark cliff band we downclimbed and the snow-filled ledge that we avoided. To reach the Adams-Guante saddle, we needed to stay more on Adams' west face, as opposed to the northwest ridge's crest. The inconsistent snow was toilsome, but finally we made it to the saddle. Our second view in a few weeks of mammoth North Crestone Lake was excellent, and we were quite happy knowing that Pico Guante would require only three hundred more feet of elevation gain from our tiring legs. And we were thankful that this would be a straightforward 300'!

It had been four hours since we left the summit of Montaņa Mujeres, but at three o'clock, we were on our third and final summit of the day. We looked back at Mount Adams and thought about the challenges that it had presented us with. This is definitely a mountain to be respected! The Crestones and Kit Carson dominated the view to the south while we rested on Guante's large summit. Shortly after, we began the descent to South Crestone Lake, not knowing to what a great extent we were entering the most scenic portion of our day. From the saddle east of Guante, our descent was on grassy slopes almost all the way to the lake. This view of Montaņa Mujeres had me fooled for a moment. I thought it was Mount Adams at first, but then realized I was looking at his shorter neighbor.

After locating the trail with no trouble, we began the glorious hike out. South Crestone Creek easily ranks among the most beautiful locales in the Sangres. I took a third of my pictures after we left the summit of Pico Guante. While UN 12,740 was fantastic, it was West Mujeres that kept me snapping pics. As we descended the steep trail, Erin and I continually found something new about West Mujeres that was worth recording: an extreme couloir, fabulous afternoon light, and a strange, mushroom-shaped rock near the summit. There was more snow in South Crestone Creek than in Willow Creek, so Erin and I got our first taste of skidding down a winter trail; it felt good on the knees! As we dropped to the San Luis Valley, the trail left the creek to drop from a ridge into a smaller draw. As we were switchbacking down, Erin spotted a bull elk and a couple of cows who dashed into the cover of the trees almost as soon as she did. The trail was easy to follow, and before we knew it, we were at the junction between the South Crestone Trail and the Willow Creek Trail, just a few yards from the trailhead. We finished with a little better than an 11-hour round trip time. On the way back we stopped at Coyote Cantina to replenish our drained stores of energy before finishing the long drive back to Denver. Since winter seems to be setting in early this year, we're thrilled that we got into the Sangres again to finally climb Adams.