Colorado Loses One 14,000’er and Gains Another After Scientific Assessment

BY WILL BRENDZA

The LIDAR Data mapping Colorado’s Park, Custer, and Fremont Counties was published in 2020, and it raised questions for Eric Gilbertson. The mountaineer and mechanical engineer likes to conduct ground surveys on peaks in his spare time, and his friend Ben Loftin pointed out how close Crestone and East Crestone Peaks’ elevations looked on the LIDAR data. They were damn near identical on the map.

Gilbertson couldn’t get that out of his head.

“LIDAR data can have errors,” Gilbertson told our sister site, GearJunkie. “So, if you see a summit elevation [which is derived] from LIDAR, it could be plus or minus a couple of feet.”

So, in October 2025, he and two other scientists set out to determine the precise elevation of both peaks. It was a challenging undertaking — not just because Crestone is one of Colorado’s most notoriously difficult and dangerous 14,000’ers, but also because they’d have to climb it carrying heavy survey equipment. Then, once at the top, they’d need to let the Trimble DA2 dGNSS receivers log data for at least two hours. But the effort paid off.

Photo: Eric Gilbertson

On October 5, Gilbertson confirmed for the first time that East Crestone Peak is actually 3.6 inches taller than Crestone. And because they’re connected by a ridge that barely dips 50 feet, “this means East Crestone is, in fact, a ranked 14’er and Crestone is a sub-peak,” Gilbertson said.

That might not seem like a big change to some. But for the thousands of hikers and climbers who obsess over Colorado’s 14,000+ foot peaks, it’s big news. According to Gilbertson’s findings, the Centennial State just lost one 14’er and gained a new one.

The 3.6-inch difference: East Crestone vs. Crestone

Gilbertson is an associate teaching professor of mechanical and civil engineering at Seattle University. He’s summited K2 without oxygen and has bagged all of the Centennial 14’ers (Crestone Peak, included). Two years ago, he became just the third American to receive the Snow Leopard Award for summiting all five 7,000m peaks in the former Soviet Union.

Last year, he surveyed Mount Rainier and proved that the summit had moved over 150 meters from the summit point recognized by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). A graduate of MIT, he’s a no-nonsense kind of person who approaches problems very methodically. He applied that meticulousness to the Crestone survey.

“I did this as rigorously as possible,” he said.

Photo: Elijah Gendron

They used two separate receivers, one on each peak. The receivers took data simultaneously so that any atmospheric distortions would be the same for both data sets.

“Each of these receivers is on a one-foot rod, which is perfectly vertical and touching the exact summit. And then that’s stabilized with a tripod,” he described. “So then we can measure the height of the receiver, and subtract off a foot, and you get the height of the ground underneath it.”

The longer these receivers log data, the more accurate it gets. So, after leaving the trailhead at 1:30 am, hiking the grueling trail to the summit, and arriving right at sunrise, he, Loftin, and Elijah Gendron had to hang out at 14,299 feet for two hours and 15 minutes.

Photo: Eric Gilbertson

A long day

It made for a long day, not least because Gilbertson had his flight home that same afternoon. It was a race against the clock to gather the data they needed, get down, and then get to DIA as fast as possible.

But you can’t rush science. So, they waited, taking in the views, relaxing, checking up on the receivers, taking measurements, and generally killing time until the data was done logging.

Gilbertson made his flight. When he reviewed the data back at his Seattle home, he was pretty excited about what they’d discovered: a 3.6-inch difference in favor of East Crestone Peak.

“It’s really close,” he said. “Which is why we were using all the fancy equipment.”

Making it ‘official’

Now that we have the data proving East Creston is the true summit, the USGS should make it official, change the maps, and notify the public. Right?

It’s not quite that simple, according to Gilbertson.

Photo: Eric Gilbertson

He said he isn’t sure how else something becomes “official” besides publishing it in a journal. When his discovery at Mount Rainier was published, he said the USGS “didn’t care at all.” It was interesting news for climbers, mountaineers, and Seattle locals. But the government didn’t take it seriously enough to change anything. He expects a similar response to this discovery about East Crestone.

Still, the news is scientifically important, and that’s important to him, which counts for something. “It’s definitely neat to discover something new. That’s one of my motivations for measuring mountains,” he said. And, this news about Crestone seems particularly important to people in the Centennial State. “It seems like in Colorado, many more people are interested here, even compared to the Rainier measurement.”

So, if Crestone is still on your 14er list, you might consider climbing East Crestone instead. It’s a short distance from one to the other and just 3.5 inches of extra elevation gain.

This story first appeared in GearJunkie.