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| Sangre De Christo Panorama |
This panorama does not do justice to the breathtaking scope
of the Sangre De Christo Mountain Range in Southern Colorado. When riding the westbound #4 on the Cumbres
and Toltec, the train rounds a curve just beyond Ferguson’ Trestle and starts a
long pull up Gravity Hill. As you slowly
gain elevation the entire range of the Sangre De Christo spreads before
you. With Mt. Blanca and the Great Sand
Dunes to the north ranging almost 75 miles past the San Luis Hills and on to
the dormant volcano, San Antonio Mountain in New Mexico, on the south. It is
of note that this visible portion of the Sangre De Christo Range is considered
the “Southern” portion of the Range which extends an equal distance and more to
the north.
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| San Luis Valley, Colorado |
The San Luis Valley of Colorado is a large fertile basin of volcanic
soil formed by tectonic subduction which uplifted, spread and split the
overlying crust forming the Rio Grande Rift, dividing two mountain ranges, the San Juans and the Sangre De
Christo, and laying open a broad basin. Later extreme volcanic action,
combined with powerful geologic forces to form the canvas on which nature worked to create the picture we see today. These geologic events will be the subject of
another post – it is breathtaking but the story will wait.
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| 14er in San Juan Range SW Colorado |
Colorado has 53 peaks higher than 14,000, taken together
they are called, “The Fourteeners.” The
numbers climb higher if you count everything over 13,500 feet; this post will
focus on that group of mountains over 13,500 feet in the Sangre De Christo
Range (“Range”) and one peak in particular.
There are 22 peaks over 13,500 in the Range nine of which
are over 14,000. Of those Blanca Peak at
14,350 is the fourth highest peak in Colorado.
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| Pikes Peak - Colorado Springs |
There is a second measure of scale called “prominence.” Prominence it the height of a peak measured
from the immediately surrounding area to the top. Thus, the prominence of Blanca Peak is
measured from the floor of the San Luis Valley to the peak of the
mountain. This is not always true for
instance, the Front Range of the Rockies west of Denver has a substantially
lower prominence because it is bounded by lower ranges of foothills thus
reducing height of the exposed mountain.
A notable exception is the abrupt rise of Pike’s Peak in Colorado
Springs to the south of Denver which rises unobstructed from the great planes;
in this instance the 14,115 foot peak has a 5,520 foot prominence.
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| Blanca Massif from the west - Sangre De Christo Range |
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| Blanca Massif from Little Bear |
The three surrounding peaks
are joined to the higher Blanca peak by a series of narrow ridges. The ridge connecting to Little Bear is a “Technical
Traverse”, a very narrow spine of rock which only a very experienced
technical climber can safely cross.
Don't let the picture fool you those ridges are several hundred feet high. Blanca Peak is on the right and Ellingwood Point to the left. Mount Lindsey is out of the picture to the right.
“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. The term is also used to refer to a group of mountains formed by such a structure.
In mountaineering and climbing literature, a massif is frequently used to denote the main mass of an individual mountain. The massif is a smaller structural unit of the crust than a tectonic plate and is considered the fourth largest driving force in geomorphology."
It is certainly prominent and it is geologically whole so now you puff-up and say something terribly droll to those around you such as:
“Well, today I saw something terribly interesting, a Massif, it was YOUGE.”
