Longs Peak...the Sequel

Cause once in less than 2 weeks wasn't enough...

Apparently I am so cool that Dana wants to be like me. ;)

Dana has wanted to do a 14-er for a while, so when she saw that I did Longs Peak, she asked me when we could do it together...little did we know we would actually be doing it just over a week later.

It just happened to work out that we could do it on Labor Day. So Dana came down and we hiked up. :)

I don't know what it is about trying to get sleep when my friends are here, but it is soooo hard. Dana and I knew we had to be up at 1:30 in the morning, but we could not stop laughing and go to sleep. We ended up getting a little over 2 hours of sleep. {Dang those thoughts of yummy sandwiches dancing through our heads.}

We got to the trail head and started hiking at 3:15 am. Dana decided to be a speedster on the drive up (so maybe I put us a little behind schedule with my one misguided turn, but I caught it quickly and I was pretty proud of myself that I only messed up once,;) and I had gotten a little sick, so the first hour of the hike was not very fun for me. Luckily the sickness passed and then I only had to worry about hypothermia. By the time we got to the boulder field the sun was starting to peek up over the horizon. It wasn't coming up fast enough though; we were frickin freezing! Some crazy guy was in shorts and joking about how he wanted a popsicle, "Anybody have any popsicles?" ...Dana did...also known as her fingers. My warm bed was sounding pretty nice right about now...How did Dana talk me into doing this? Dana had to put her hands in her armpits to keep them from falling off...

It had rained a few hours before we started hiking and the rocks were a little icy on the backside of the mountain as a result, but it wasn't too bad.

I opted not to take my heavy camera up the mountain this time, so I let Dana take all the pics with her cam. There are lots more dorky pics on fb...We had a lot of fun with it...Dana is good at bringing out the dork in people. hahaha :)
Because I'm cool standing right next to a huge cliff...

We made it to the summit in about 6 hours...it was actually warm enough to peel off a layer of clothing and enjoy some sunshine.

We got a kick out of the "bathrooms" at the boulder field...you can see every one's head when they are standing in them...apparently it wasn't in the budget to make the walls a foot taller.

Dana liked talking to people as she peeked over the top. lol

Only a half mile to go to get back to the trail head...phew

Dana was excited to be done! Woohoo!

It seemed a little easier the second time around, but I don't think I will be doing anymore serious hiking this year...I think I've had my fill. BUT...Next year it would be fun to get a big group of people together to do it....who's with me???