Mount Lindsey
Longs to Lindsey
After Longs Peak, we saw some weather was headed for Pikes Peak right above Colorado Springs. We spent almost a week trying to nail Pikes in some powder, but all we got was closed roads, high winds, and no motivation to hike the famously brutal Barr Trail. Finally we called it quits and deiced to head to the Sangres before we lost any more snow there.
First up, Mount Lindsey. We drove south from Colorado Springs 40 minutes past Pubelo and turned West onto the 69 and headed towards the Hufernao Valley Trailhead. Again, I was awestruck to find yet another jaw dropping part of Colorado, somehow surrounded by mountains on all sides and filled with emptiness, horses, sage, and the occasional cattle operation. It feels like these sleepy Colorado valleys have somehow been left untouched from the rest of the new Colorado popularity craze. We made it up 2.5-3 miles from the trailhead on the Hufernao Valley Road in the Camper, and went to sleep planning an early start.
We left around 6 am. I was having a hard time getting my brain to turn off to all the suffering and extra millage we would have to skin on the flat road. I was mostly suffering, however, because my brain could only think about the suffer fest I was going to have to endure. I had to change my mindset because we still had a long day ahead of us.
We followed the trail and then dropped off into the creek and made our way up under the Iron Nipple (great mountain name!) to gain the saddle between Lindsey and the Nipple. When we finally got to Lindsey’s Northwest ridge we saw a great snow climb close to us and decided to hike up that. I remembered reading and the pictures from Lou’s book indicated this would be a good choice for to climb up. The climbing was awesome! Steep, exposed, with great snow conditions to really punch into and get coverage with our crampons and a nice hold with our ice axes.
When we got to the top of the climb, we noticed it wasn’t the top of the mountain. We gained the ridge and walked a hundred ish feet to the south where the summit lay and from there, we saw a beautiful line of about 1500’ of snow all the way down to the valley.
We did our customary summit make out, changed over, and rode down the questionable but somehow turnable wind effected, sometimes zipper crust snow to the basin. From there we traversed back over towards the Norhtwest ridge where we hiked up to the saddle at 12,250 and then rode back down to the creek below the Iron Nipple.
The last thing I will say about this tour was it really confirmed my suspison that you actually should teach your kids to ski as well as snowboard. If you don’t learn how to ski, your life as a splitboarder is so different. It is important you know how to ski if you want to be a proficient splitboard mountaineer. If you are an adult and never learned how to ski, I suggest you pick up some old Nordic gear and ask a friend for a lesson. This will improve your splitboard skiing 100X.
We made our long way back to the camper transitioning from our skis to our boots where it was necessary. Another long day for us, but we were happy to get back to our home on wheels and figure out what our next plan was.
