The Crestone Needle

The Crestone Needle is a 14,197 thousand peek with a technical rout that goes directly up a 2000 foot rock face. It begins with a 5.7 for 200 feet and then a 5.5-5.7 for maybe 100 feet, then there is 1000 feet of 4 class(not much more difficult than a ladder at about 80 degrees), then 4 pitches of 5.5-5.7. So besides the length and the elevation I thought it would not be very difficult.

Hands, legs trembling, breathing quickly and lifting my foot up to my shoulder hight on a fucking 4th class. What the fuck?

With the threat of afternoon thunderstorms that always threaten 14ers in the Colorado summer, we had to begin at day break and simultaneously climb the 4 class 1000 feet. One must do this to make the summit quickly and descend before the afternoon in order to avoid lightening even more than the rain. I have never really done high elevation exposed (that means open air beneath you and if you slip without a rope you could bounce a very very long way) climbing. We had a rope, but we did not have the time to place anchors, so if one of us slipped or if a part of the rock broke the other would have to arrest his fall without any aid. So I'm in the lead and there is this hump of rock. I feel like my chest is up against the front of a school buss, not the flat faced grayhounds but the old yellow ones with hoods. I put my hands on the hood and see no holds betweeen my hands and feet. Alex says "hurry up man, it's only 4th class." So I look down and see a the ground 600 feet bellow. Only small ledges and no anchors between Alex and my harness. I put both hands on the hood and push and hump and slide up on it like a beached whale. I am breathing thin air hard with my feet in mid air and my chest laid out on the hood of a buss and saying "fuck, fuck, fuck this fucking sport."
After that I insisted we drop an anchor at least during difficult pulls; but there weren't many cracks to use with the anchors. Two or three times we simply put a sling around a little rock horn as we simul climbed an exposed wave of rock.
A few times I thought he or I was going to slip and we would drag the other to our demise. needless to say, once we got to the last four pitches (the last 500 feet) where we placed anchors I felt much more at ease. By then we were at about 13600 feet and we could very easily discern rain heading our way. So the last few pitches I pulled through the thin air to the summit. Luckily the rain kept to the East of us and we descended without too much difficulty (the book's description of the descent begins with "The descent is complicated". True enough we began in the wrong rock gully for the the first 500 feet and we had some difficulty finding a way to traverse to the trail). It was wild and thank that fucking old son of a bitch in the clouds that the rain and lightening stayed to the East of us.