Ellingwood Point 14er: Alpine Climb in Colorado’s Sangre de Cristo Range

Posted on August 30, 2025November 5, 2025 by jim

When I poked my head out of the tent at 3am I could see stars, so we’re getting an alpine start up to Ellingwood Point.
While it sucks retracing miles of trail and thousands of feet of elevation we’ve already done, it’s better than getting completely rained out and having to come back up that crappy Lake Como road at some point in the future!
As nautical daylight slowly creeped in we could see a bank of clouds below us covering the valley.
But as the sun rose we were treated to pure Rocky Mountain splendor with gorgeous layers of color above those clouds.
It was short-lived though, and both the cloud layer above and the cloud layer below converged and shrouded the mountains with a blanket of white.
Very, very thick white, it’s a good thing for GPS tracking or the routefinding would have been a rough time.
Speaking of rough, the entire trail up here is more of a suggestion, boulder after boulder after boulder.
No nice trail, and almost no fun scrambling. Yech.
Especially after yesterday’s super fun time climbing Little Bear Peak.
Ellingwood Point definitely ranks up in my top 10 LEAST favorite peaks out of all the Colorado 14ers.
But – it’s good to have it done, numbers 54, 55, and 56 – only the Crestone Traverse left to go!

Cloud Sandwich

Clouds below and clouds above, pretty cool!

The Morning After

Sunrise brings a very different story of the Blanca Group! Colette took this photo from the RV down in Alamosa looking up at us.

Things Disappear

The clouds are starting to fill in

Lookout

Taking a break and looking down at the cloudpack moving in.

Zero Visibility

Yes it’s a white photo. Yes there are rocks and mountains here somewhere.