Tijeras Peak (13,604 ft) by Brian Schultz Saturday July 22, 2006
Tim and I drove to Westcliffe yesterday after finishing our climb on Lookout Peak. We had a very good dinner at the Sangrita restaurant in town before turning in for a 4:00 AM wake-up. After a short night of sleep, we departed in the early morning darkness for the Rainbow Trail trailhead. The approach to the trailhead follows the same road to South Colony Lakes for the Crestones but turns left at the T intersection instead of right. The four wheel drive road from the trailhead rivals the difficulties of the road to South Colony Lakes, though to a lesser degree, and after a slow, bouncing ride up the narrow road, we arrived to a parking lot full of vehicles. We didn't see anyone milling about when we started at 5:25 for Music Pass.
The trail is an easy 1.25 miles from the parking area to Music Pass. Greeted by sunrise at the pass, we stayed until first light hit Tijeras before descending on the still excellent trail to Lower Sand Creek Lake. We arrived there at 6:55 and took a fifteen minute breakfast break to ponder not only routefinding through the woods but finding the correct ascent ramp in Tijeras' cliff band.
Tim did an excellent job of routefinding and even spotted a hit and miss trail to make the bushwhack easier. The trail faded in the grassy areas and willows above treeline but even at a distance we could clearly identify the ascent route in the cliff band ahead. We reached it at 7:45 and started up the class 3 ramp, which proved to be the crux of the climb. The ramp is steep and the hardest moves were on slabby rock at the bottom, but once past the slabs the climbing got easier.
At the top of the ramp we set a waypoint on Tim's GPS in case the weather fogged in later, and at 8:15 we turned up the slopes. We didn't actually spend 30 minutes ascending the ramp, most of the time was spent at the top by me trying to re-tighten my compressed poles. It was very frustrating to have them spin around and around but they finally locked just as Tim, while watching the weather and not thrilled with the cloud buildup, urged me to hurry.
We picked our way up the slopes by staying on as much grass as possible and reached the ridge at 9:00, elevation 13,250 feet. After stashing our poles we began scrambling along the ridge crest but soon found the going below on the left side to be much more convenient. We made quick progress without regaining the ridge again until we arrived at a wide notch just below the summit. To avoid a steep downclimb at the notch, we dropped 25 feet down the right side and then traversed back to the notch. From the notch we contoured on the left side again, staying below the crest and continuing a bit further underneath the summit to where we could easily walk up to the top. This was surprisingly simple and fast and completely avoided the 4th class climbing described in Dave Cooper's book. Our summit arrival time was 9:35.
Too bad we were fogged in by the deteriorating weather. None of the cool Crestone peaks could be seen and rain concerns kept our summit stay to 15 minutes. We departed at 9:50 in order to be off the ridge and down the ramp before the rock got wet but the rains never came and our descent thankfully went without incident. We saw our first people of the day in the woods, setting up camp and getting their fishing poles ready, and arrived minutes later at the lower lake at 11:40. After a well deserved 20 minute break we grunted back up to Music Pass, stopped briefly for a final look at Tijeras, and returned to the truck at 1:22.
Tijeras was a fun climb, although I wouldn't want to be on that class 3 ramp if it was wet. And it was great to finish up in the Sangres on my only Colorado trip this year.
Trailhead to summit- 4 hours 10 minutes
Summit to trailhead- 3 hours 32 minutes
Start to finish- 7 hours 57 minutes (including lots of breaks)