MOUNT LINDSEY 8/6/90

MOUNT LINDSEY 14,042'



Mountain........Mount Lindsey
Elevation.........14,042
Rank...............42nd
Range..............Sangre de Cristo
Trail length......8.5 miles (from where I parked)
Elevation gain..4,400'
Difficulty..........***
Comments........Too much snow!









TRIP REPORT

8/6/90

Another year, another trip! I flew into Denver and drove to Westcliffe, threw a bunch of stuff in my pack (I forgot my Gore-tex, and wasn't able to find the right fuel for my stove), and started hiking through the deepening early afternoon darkness toward Colony Lakes. I got up to about 11,000', but as conditions looked ominous, I dove into the woods and set up camp seconds before a crushing thunderstorm hit. I spent the rest of the day huddled in the tent listening to the rain, hail, and slashing winds as they threatened to shred my tent. I had a touch of altitude sickness that night - nausea, no appetite, couldn't sleep, and near-hypothermia as temperatures plummeted following the storm.

In the morning it was very cold and windy and I wasn't quite up for Crestone climbing, so I hiked into the Lakes and took some movies, then packed up my camp and drove to the Walsenburg Best Western to dry out my stuff. It was cold enough (in August!) that I had to run the heat in the room. The next morning I got up at 3:45, checked out at 4:15, and drove toward Mt. Lindsey - or so I thought. I took a wrong turn at an unmarked intersection and wound up at a communications center near Mosca Pass. I backtracked and found my way to the Singing River Ranch at 6:20. I was only able to get my cheap rental car about a half-mile up the jeep road approach before deep gravel & ruts forced me to park. From there it was about a six-mile hike to the trailhead. Ouch.

I saw several deer, bunnies, and chipmunks on the hike in. At one point, a raging bull was in the middle of the road protecting a small herd of cows - I had to detour way, way around to bypass his snorting and stomping. When I got to the other side of the herd, the cows started to follow me! I ducked into the woods to escape goring.

Eventually I reached the trailhead descended into the Huerfano Valley, but missed the Lindsey cutoff and hiked a mile too far to the base of Blanca. Once again I backtracked, this time bushwhacking up the side of the valley to where I thought the trail should be. There was a lot of dew at the lower elevations and snow above 11,000' - my feet were soaked by the time I found the trail. It was a fairly easy climb to the saddle between Lindsey and Iron Nipple. The direct ridge to Lindsey had some forbidding cliffs, so I traversed to the left where there were a bunch of snow-filled gullies leading to the summit. I picked a gully and started scrambling up. The snow was soft and I did a lot of post-holing and back-sliding before finally topping out on the ridge. Then it was about 1/4 mile hike to the summit cairn, where I could not find a register, so I took some pictures and headed back down.

I followed the ridge directly but soon came to the forbidding cliffs which I couldn't downclimb because of snow on the ledges, so I cut back across a slippery slabby face to the snow gully I had ascended and slid & hiked back down to Huerfano Valley, then slogged up to the trailhead. About halfway down the road to my car a mushroom picker's pickup drove by and hauled my carcass the last 3 miles or so out. I drove to the inaccurately named Alamosa Luxury 8 and crashed.