Long's Peak

Prologue: The next time you are on Interstate 25 north of Denver, look to the west.  One large peak in the Rocky's front range will jump out at you. Even though it is over 30 miles away, Long's Peak can be seen clearly. As you sit in your car, air-conditioning on high due to the summer temperatures, think about the people reaching the summit. They are all tired, hungry, and cold. Such is the fate of those who reach the summit.

Introduction: "Somewhere up there, possibly above the tree-line, shrouded in mist, the fugitive John Rambo is hiding." This was an adapted quote from the movie First Blood. If you know John Paul, you will understand that he repeated this quote about 20 times over the length of the trip. It did, however, seem to apply to what we were undertaking this weekend. The team consisted of Bill Maher, Greg Lehman, and John Paul Goedken. Bill and JP had climbed a rather easy Mt St. Helen's last year. We all thought we were in fairly good shape. We were about to be physically taxed to our breaking points.

3:00AM Beginning. The forest. We woke up at 2:15AM and got a fairly slow start. The pics show us as bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. We had to break a wet camp site and pack that into our large packs in addition to packing our small day packs. We began hiking at 4:00AM under light from our headlamps through a dark and wet forest.

5:30AM Sunrise. Slightly above tree-line. The sun rose slowly over the Twin Sister Peaks about 4 miles to the East. The sun cast Mount Lady Washington, upon which we were hiking, in a soft pinkish glow. We saw a few elk bounding over the tundra shortly before light.

6:35AM Beginning of Boulderfield. We could see one of our goals, the Keyhole, off in the distance. Much of the hiking here is along a fairly legible trail over the tundra. From the point shown, the Keyhole is over an hour away. A nasty looking cloud was forming over the mountain, obscuring the summit.

7:10AM Boulderfield campsite. We stopped here to take a break. One lady who had been there for a few days said this was the earliest she had seen clouds at the top. A few people had already turned around thinking the weather was getting worse. That was not a good sign, but we were determined to go forward.

7:30AM Under the Keyhole. It took some rock-hopping and scrambling to make the first short ascent from the Boulderfield camp. Our eyes kept drifting upward and to our left, looking for the summit, looking for our goal. It slowly began to peek out from behind the clouds. The wind was still and it was warm below the keyhole. We were working up a sweat.

8:00AM Through the Keyhole. There is a severe weather change moving to the backside of the mountain. The temperature dropped a good 15 degrees and the wind was gusting to about 30mph. Greg decided to put on his raingear over his fleece. To us, the Keyhole meant safety. Getting caught in the afternoon storms on the other side of the mountain would have been bad. Very bad. Wet rocks are slippery rocks. Trying to climb down the steep rocks through the rain would have been like rolling the dice with our lives. The storms had begun at 12:15 the day before. When we left the keyhole, the clock began to tick.

8:15AM The Ledges. The ledges is a section of "trail" that hugs the west face of Long's Peak. The mountain rises sharply to the left side and drops off a couple thousand feet to the right. The trail is usually about 5 feet wide. It is mostly rock-hopping and scrambling here. It is fairly steep with a few very frightening pieces.

8:35AM The Ledges. Bill can be seen climbing a small section of rock. A red and yellow bull's-eye which marked the route can be seen above him. The section shown is fairly typical of areas in the ledges. The scariest spot is a 10 foot climb up a steep, flat seam in a rock similar to the one shown. It is very close to the edge. If you slip, you are a goner. While Greg was in the middle of negotiating this piece of rock, one "mountain climber" wearing tennis shoes must have thought Greg was going too slow. This guy bounded up the rock to the right (dangerous side) of Greg. For a few seconds Bill thought this man was going to slip off and die.

8:45AM The Trough. This is looking up from the bottom. If you zoom in, you can see some people much further up the mountain. The slope here is about 40 degrees with climbing consisting of many 2 to 2 ½ foot "steps". This section takes about an hour to go through. After a while, a person's legs don't do as they are told. I remember a few times I had to physically pick up my leg and place it on the next step. People had been passing us for a while. By the time we were reaching the top of this section, we realized we were getting very low on energy and time. The Keyhole was a long way away. The Trough ends with a very technical piece: a pure vertical climb up a 10 piece of rock right on the edge of the mountain.

9:40AM The Narrows. The Trough took longer than we thought it would. We had also expected to see the top by now. Unknown to us, there was a small section of "trail" between the Trough and the Homestretch. The path consists of climbing over many sections of rocks. It is not steep, but is very narrow and right on the edge of the mountain. JP's backpack kept getting caught on rocks as we were climbing through. That was dangerous. He ditched the pack next to the trail. This was probably the most frightening section of the trip. By this time, we had all told ourselves that we could leave anytime. We were so physically spent, cutting the trip short would have been a blessing. However, no one voiced the languor they had inside for fear of making it more real. We kept going.

9:50AM The Homestretch. This is where most of the real rock climbing comes in. The slope of the slabs shown is about 60 degrees. The way to negotiate this is to pick a seam and start up it. There are hand and foot holds most of the way. The whole thing is about 100 yards long, but seems much longer. And we were running out of time. This section is very physically taxing, but we enjoyed it considerably. We also had to deal with many climbers coming down from the top.

10:20AM The Summit. Taking that last step to the top, a person's spirit wants to jump up and scream. Their body wants to collapse. After 7 hours, 7 miles, and 1 vertical mile of climbing, we made it. The top is rather flat and lonely. Such is the case of all mountains. This is an area accessible to only a few. We had made it into the thin air. We were exhilarated and exhausted. But we were only half way there. We still needed to get back down…

11:40AM The Ledges. JP picked the wrong route down this section. He is having to do some butt-sliding. Greg is learning from his mistake and will follow the trail to his left.

12:10PM The Keyhole. We made it back and felt a little safer now. Looking down the Boulderfield, it seemed like we were on the moon. The scale of this place is easily misunderstood. Zoom in to see people further down the slope (lower right). It is about 1.5 hours to get over the ridge on the left. If a storm came here, we would have been stuck in the wide open. It was about 3 hours until we would even see a tree. Being the tallest thing around during an electrical storm is not a good idea. Bill kept the pace going forward all the way down the mountain.

3:00PM Just above treeline. We could once again begin to see small trees. These small trees would soon become bigger trees and then become forest. Somehow Mother Nature was on our side. The storms were descending the mountain slowly. Every so often, you could see flashes of lightning. We were just behind them - following them down the mountian. Only had a few drops of rain fell on our heads the whole day. Very lucky.

4:10PM Forest. Adding another 45 pounds to our back was the last thing we wanted to do at that point, but we had to get our gear out. We found our packs undisturbed and threw them on our backs. Their was only about 1.7 miles left to go to get back to the car.

5:00PM The car. JP only had one small blister. Greg was ecstatic to be done. Bill "owned" that mountain. This was easily the hardest physical activity we had done in our lives. It was exciting. It was strenuous. It was nice to be done.

There were about 100 people who we saw climbing that day. Most everyone was from Denver, Boulder, or another city at about 5000 ft above sea level. (Des Moines is at 600-800ft). Most everyone was nice to talk to. However, the "elite climbers" didn't talk much as you walked by them. Des Moines would be proud of us. We were by far the friendliest group on the trail.

Somewhere up there, possibly above the tree-line, shrouded in mist, the three Iowans made it all the way to the summit.