The Last Fourteeners

The peaks rising above Crestone were the great unfinished business of Colorado mountaineering for decades. By the time most of the frontier had been mapped and settled, nearly every fourteener in the state had been climbed. These had not.

Crestone Peak rises to fourteen thousand two hundred ninety-four feet. Crestone Needle reaches fourteen thousand one hundred ninety-seven feet. Both take their name from the Spanish word crestón, meaning a large ridge or crest.

An earlier reference comparing the spires to the Teton range of Wyoming never caught on. The first recorded ascents of both peaks came on July twenty-fourth, nineteen sixteen. Albert Ellingwood, a law professor and one of Colorado's most accomplished early climbers, reached both summits with Eleanor Davis during a month-long expedition that had launched from Colorado Springs.

Crestone Needle is widely recognized as the last of Colorado's fifty-three fourteeners to receive a documented first ascent. Ellingwood returned in nineteen twenty-five to pioneer a more technical route on the Needle's northeast ridge, now called the Ellingwood Arete and still considered one of the finest alpine climbs in the state. A third fourteener visible from this valley, Challenger Point, at fourteen thousand eighty-one feet, carries a more recent name.

It was renamed in memory of the seven astronauts killed when the Space Shuttle Challenger broke apart seventy-three seconds after liftoff on January twenty-eighth, nineteen eighty-six. The United States Board of Geographic Names approved that name in April of nineteen eighty-seven. None of these peaks is the tallest in Colorado, but mountaineers consistently rank them among the most technically demanding.