Longs Peak Adventure

This is going to be a long post with lots of pictures, but I felt like it was worth documenting.


Yesterday I went with the Young Men and Young Women to hike Longs Peak. I had no idea what I was in for. We were told that it was a tough hike and to be ready for it to take at least 12 hours at a good pace. Of course I kind of thought that all the warnings and such were probably over-kill and they just wanted to make sure the youth were ready for a strenuous hike and not a relaxing stroll. I should have paid a little more attention to the explanation of what we would be doing.

I got up at 2:30 in the morning, got dressed, and packed my backpack with my camera, snacks, water, and extra clothing (gloves, hat, & sweatshirt.) As soon as Kathy got to my house at 3 am to watch my girls, I was out the door. We had to get an early start because when you are climbing to such high altitudes you need to beat the afternoon storms.

Everyone met at a local park and we carpooled up to the base of the hike. I couldn't believe all of the cars flooding the parking lot and road going in. We actually didn't get started climbing until about 5:30 am.


A little background I found online about Longs Peak:

The summit rises 14,259 ft above sea level.
It is considered to be the most difficult class 3 (not sure what a class 3 hike is) 14-er in the State of Colorado.
It is the image on the Colorado state quarter.
It is one of less than 50 mountains in CO to have a glacier...Mills Glacier.
It is 15 miles round trip.
57 people have died climbing Longs Peak...according to the National Park Service, one person dies every year attempting to climb the mountain.



When we first started hiking we needed flashlights, of course, because it was still dark. We were probably about 2 miles into the hike when the sun started coming up. We were still below the timberline but just starting to emerge out of the thick forest.The mountains in the distance had a beautiful pink glow.

The trees turned into shrubs as we reached the Timber line and came upon this sign. We were 2.5 miles into the hike and although they had gone pretty quickly, 5 more sounded like a lot.

A little ways past the sign, I got my first "good" view of the peak I was planning to summit:

Just below the peak, the East face of the mountain contains a sheer rock cliff know as the Diamond. It is called that because, well, it looks like a diamond. :)

Looking down from the spot where the previous picture was taken:

Before beginning this hike, we were told that there were 3 main destinations: the Boulder Field, the Keyhole, and the Summit. In this picture you can see the Keyhole and the Boulder Field (the Boulder Field is just a gigantic pile of rocks below the keyhole.) The Summit is out of the picture to the left. You make your way to the Summit after passing through the Keyhole and along the backside of the mountain.
I remember this being about the time that my backpack was getting VERY heavy and I began to question my real need for food and water. ;) We stopped to take a quick picture.."we" were Ella, myself, and Sarah...aka "Team Awesome.":)

I happen to think this is a pretty cool picture of the keyhole from the Boulder Field. If you click on it to see it larger, you can see tiny people dots scattered among the rocks. It gives you a better idea of the size and number of rocks. It is just over a mile from the Boulder Field to the Keyhole. That is a lot of boulders to climb.

We stopped at the Boulder Field and were joined shortly by other members of our group to eat lunch.

Sarah was greeted by a very friendly marmot (?.) This little guy climbed right up her leg and put his paw in her hand.

The toughest part of the hike begins at the Boulder Field, 5.9 miles into the 7.5 mile ascent. After a quick break, "team awesome" headed up to the keyhole.
Here is Sarah making her way up:

Ella is almost there:

Once at the Keyhole, you get some really great views...this is when I really wish I had a wide angle lens...it would have made a huge difference when trying to capture the views. We reached the keyhole at 6.2 miles.

This is the view to the West of the keyhole: This is the view of what we just climbed to get to the keyhole...once again, click on the pic to get a better idea of what the Boulder Field is like.

The view to the SW of the keyhole (I think...I'm not so great with directions.;) I don't know these people, but I wanted a picture that would show what kind of stuff we were climbing:

This is a picture of what is called the Trough. This section of the climb is 1000 vertical feet. It looks much more steep in person than it does in this picture.

This picture is out of order...This is looking back toward the keyhole from the bottom of the Trough. As we were climbing this section, there were nearly sheer cliffs of 1000 ft or more to our right. (again, click to see the people and gain a better perspective.) You can see the keyhole-it is the little sopt of orange-like light shining through the rocks.

After reaching the top of the Trough, you pass an area called the narrows. There was a point where traffic was being held up because there was only room for one person at a time, and the people going up had to wait for a line of people coming down before moving forward.

Here are Sarah and Ella in what is known as the Homestretch.

Hooray! we reached the flat, yet very rocky, football field sized Summit!!!

Here I am in all my nasty, mountain conquering glory:

You can't climb to the top of a mountain and not get some cool I can reach 14,270 feet-while-jumping pictures now can you?

Team Awesome (Sarah dubbed us that btw ;) reached the top at about 11:30am. So it took us 6 hours to get to the Summit. We waited for about 30 mins when the next group of climbers from our Ward reached the top. After a quick greeting we started heading down. There were some ugly clouds moving in and we did not want to get caught in a storm. The group behind us didn't stay long at the top because of the weather and they followed us down. This is what our beautiful view was turning into:

Not 10 mins after we started our descent, it started snowing. It was cold and made the rocks pretty slippery. It was a little scary, especially because the large number of people we saw on the way up had dwindled down to a handful. Luckily the storm passed quickly and the sun came back out after about 10 mins of snow and started drying the rocks off. We chalked the storm up to an added bonus in our adventure. :)

On the way down we hustled. We made it down in 4 hours where it took us 6 to get up. Even though the climb up was more tiring, I think the climb down was more brutal on my body. My knees, ankles, and feet were killing me from all the impact. I think I should have jumped off of a few less boulders.

We stopped at the waterfall to take a picture on the way down. It seemed like it took us 10 mins to get to this point when we were going up, but it seemed like it took us an hour to reach the bottom from this point going down. We were exhausted by this point, and yet Ella and Sarah found it in them to smile. :)

It was a great experience and I am so glad I got the opportunity to go (thanks to the wonderful people who watched my girls for me.) I am definitely feeling quite sore today and I think that next time I do this climb, I will take it a little slower on the way down...I know I am getting old when I actually have to start thinking about how my knees will feel.