Kit Carson Peak
Encyclopedia
Fourteener
In mountaineering terminology in the United States, a fourteener is a mountain that exceeds 14,000 feet above mean sea level. There are 547 fourteeners in the world. The importance of fourteeners is greatest in Colorado, which has the majority of such peaks in North America...
s in the state of Colorado
Colorado
Colorado is a U.S. state that encompasses much of the Rocky Mountains as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of the Great Plains...
. It lies in the Sangre de Cristo Range
Sangre de Cristo Range
The Sangre de Cristo Range, called the East Range locally in the San Luis Valley, is a narrow mountain range of the Rocky Mountains running north and south along the east side of the Rio Grande Rift in southern Colorado in the United States...
near Crestone Peak
Crestone Peak
Crestone Peak is the seventh highest peak in the U.S. state of Colorado. It is the second highest peak in the Sangre de Cristo Range after Blanca Peak. It rises in the Sangre de Cristo Wilderness above the east side of the San Luis Valley along the boundary between Saguache and Custer counties,...
and Crestone Needle
Crestone Needle
Crestone Needle is one of the fourteeners of Colorado, in the heart of the Sangre de Cristo Range. It is part of a group of four fourteeners known as "the Crestones", headed by Crestone Peak and also including Kit Carson Mountain and Humboldt Peak.While not as high as Crestone Peak, and connected...
and is named after the frontiersman Kit Carson
Kit Carson
Christopher Houston "Kit" Carson was an American frontiersman and Indian fighter. Carson left home in rural present-day Missouri at age 16 and became a Mountain man and trapper in the West. Carson explored the west to California, and north through the Rocky Mountains. He lived among and married...
. The peak is also known as Kit Carson Mountain, a name that is used for both the massif
Massif
In geology, a massif is a section of a planet's crust that is demarcated by faults or flexures. In the movement of the crust, a massif tends to retain its internal structure while being displaced as a whole...
with three summits (Columbia Point, Kit Carson Peak and Challenger Point) or to describe the main summit only.
Recent history
In 1995, the 151 square miles (391.1 km²) Baca Ranch, which included Kit Carson Peak, was purchased for $15 million by a group that included Yale UniversityYale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
. By 1997, one of the partners in the group, rancher Gary Boyce, had funded a signature drive that put two constitutional
Constitution of the State of Colorado
The Constitution of the State of Colorado is the foundation of the laws and government of the U.S. state of Colorado. The current, and only, Colorado State Constitution was drafted 1876-03-14, approved by Colorado voters 1876-07-01, and took effect upon the statehood of Colorado on 1876-08-01...
amendments on Colorado's 1998 ballot, both "aimed at financially breaking the water establishment" which was fighting his proposal to export water from the Baca. In 1997, the U.S. Forest Service led what turned out to be a 13-year effort to introduce new trails, campsites and trailheads that eased ascent of Kit Carson and other peaks in the basin; the effort, coordinated with trail restoration groups such as the Colorado Fourteeners Initiative and the Rocky Mountain Field Institute, was concluded in 2010.
In January 2002, the Nature Conservancy announced the signing of a $31 million purchase agreement for the Baca Ranch. The purchase significantly expanded the Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve
Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve
-Other features:The park also contains alpine lakes and tundra, six peaks over 13,000 feet in elevation, ancient spruce and pine forests, large stands of aspen and cottonwood, grasslands, and wetlands — all habitat for diverse wildlife and plant species.One of the most unusual features of...
in 2004.
The peak features complex terrain that has misled climbers in the past, contributing to a death in the summer of 2006, 2010, and 2011.
In 2011, the United States Board on Geographic Names
United States Board on Geographic Names
The United States Board on Geographic Names is a United States federal body whose purpose is to establish and maintain uniform usage of geographic names throughout the U.S. government.-Overview:...
considered a proposal to rename the peak Mount Crestone, voting unanimously against it due to the potential confusion with nearby Crestone Peak
Crestone Peak
Crestone Peak is the seventh highest peak in the U.S. state of Colorado. It is the second highest peak in the Sangre de Cristo Range after Blanca Peak. It rises in the Sangre de Cristo Wilderness above the east side of the San Luis Valley along the boundary between Saguache and Custer counties,...
and Crestone Needle
Crestone Needle
Crestone Needle is one of the fourteeners of Colorado, in the heart of the Sangre de Cristo Range. It is part of a group of four fourteeners known as "the Crestones", headed by Crestone Peak and also including Kit Carson Mountain and Humboldt Peak.While not as high as Crestone Peak, and connected...
. The proposal had been put forward because Carson had led a 1863-64 campaign to dislodge Navajo Indians
Long Walk of the Navajo
The Long Walk of the Navajo, also called the Long Walk to Bosque Redondo , refers to the 1864 deportation of the Navajo people by the U.S. Government. Navajos were forced to walk at gunpoint from their reservation in what is now Arizona to eastern New Mexico. The trip lasted about 18 days...
, who had sided with the Confederacy
Confederate States of America
The Confederate States of America was a government set up from 1861 to 1865 by 11 Southern slave states of the United States of America that had declared their secession from the U.S...
.
Climbing
One popular route on Kit Carson Mountain climbs from the west side of the range, starting atWillow Creek Trailhead (elevation: 8900 ft (2,712.7 m)). This route first climbs Challenger Point
Challenger Point
Challenger Point is a fourteener in the Sangre de Cristo range, located in the southern part of the U.S. state of Colorado. The summit is on the northwest shoulder of Kit Carson Mountain, and is a subpeak of the latter...
, just to the west of Kit Carson. Climbing from the saddle between Challenger Point to Kit Carson peak involves crossing a path commonly called 'Kit Carson Avenue'. Total elevation gain for this route is 6250 ft (1,905 m), in a 14 miles (22.5 km) round-trip.
Kit Carson can also be reached from the east side of the Sangre de Cristos via the South Colony Lakes access. (A four-wheel drive
Four-wheel drive
Four-wheel drive, 4WD, or 4×4 is a four-wheeled vehicle with a drivetrain that allows all four wheels to receive torque from the engine simultaneously...
road currently provides relatively a high elevation trailhead; however this road will be closed half way up on October 13, 2009.) This route starts by using part of the trail for Humboldt Peak
Humboldt Peak (Colorado)
Humboldt Peak is a high peak in the Sangre de Cristo Range in southern Colorado. It is the least challenging climb of the Crestone group of fourteeners, which include Crestone Peak, Crestone Needle, and Kit Carson Peak...
, and then traverses a ridge and plateau toward Kit Carson. A sub-peak named Columbia Point
Columbia Point
Columbia Point is a 13,980 foot subpeak of Kit Carson Peak, in Colorado, USA. It was known informally as Kat Carson, but was officially named Columbia Point in 2003 to honor the seven astronauts who died when the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated during re-entry on February 1, 2003...
(informally known as "Kat Carson") is climbed on the way to the main summit.
Kit Carson does not have any glaciers but it does have a semi-permanent ice patch on its rugged north face, which rarely melts even in the driest years (such as 2002 and 2006). During the summer Kit Carson and the neighboring peaks are hit with a diurnal cycle of thunder storms, which often form within a short time period; lightning occurs almost daily and has killed climbers as recently as 2003.
Fatalities also occur because climbers make the mistake of descending the coulier (gulley) between the summit and Challenger Point. Though the coulier looks like a short cut down, and starts off gently enough, it leads to ice fields, and on the edges it quickly becomes cliffed-out, with patches of scree and loose rock, ending in sheer and highly technical terrain. Search and Rescue teams regularly recovery bodies from the bottom of the coulier. Bodies that do not make it to the bottom require highly-specialized technical teams, not local to the area, and thus not as quickly available to respond.
See also
- List of Colorado fourteeners
- Mountain peaks of ColoradoMountain peaks of ColoradoThis article comprises three sortable tables of the major mountain peaks of the U.S. State of Colorado.Topographic elevation is the vertical distance above the reference geoid, a precise mathematical model of the Earth's sea level as an equipotential gravitational surface...
- Mountain ranges of ColoradoMountain ranges of ColoradoThe following table lists the major mountain ranges of the U.S. State of Colorado.-Mountain Ranges:-See also:*4000 meter peaks of Colorado*Colorado mountain passes*Geography of Colorado*Lists of mountains*Mountain peaks of Colorado...
External links
- Kit Carson Peak and Challenger Point on 14ers.com, including Climbing routes