The Ellingwood Arete on Crestone Needle in the Sangre de Cristo group in the Colorado Rockies is a beautiful, fun route up one of Colorado's "Fourteeners" and Dan and I had a blast climbing it. The route (via the Ledges start) was originally climbed by Albert Ellingwood and pioneering female alpinist Eleanor Davis in August 1925. It has been included among the Fifty Classic Climbs of North America by Roper and Steck, and it is always a pleasure to pick one of these off. We did the more interesting Arete version, a bit more direct: you walk up to the nose and start climbing rather than zig-zagging on grassy ledges for the first hundred-plus feet. There were several pitches in the vicinity of 5.7 and more than 1000 feet of low 5th class in the middle, which we simul-climbed to beat the afternoon thunderstorms, which we anticipated but which did not, in fact, appear.
