Elevation Gain - 5,300 feet
Time - 11 hours
Nathan and I headed up to Rocky Mountain National Park on Saturday afternoon for some camping and hiking over Labor Day weekend. I hadn't camped out the night before hiking a 14er in a long time, so I suggested we extend the trip a little bit by arriving the day before. Longs Peak lives up to its name, so most people who are looking to summit need to start hiking around 3 a.m. We hit the sack about 7 p.m. and slept surprisingly well until the alarm went off at 2 a.m. We packed up camp, drove up to the ranger station, and were hiking with our headlamps by 3 a.m.
The Longs Peak trail head is probably one of the most commonly hiked routes in Colorado. The perfect weather and holiday weekend only made it more well-traveled then usual. The log book from the previous day had about 150 entries. Multiply that by the average party size not too mention those that didn't sign in, and I bet 500 people or more were on the trail the day before. I think the proximity to Denver and the fact that it's in a National Park and therefore there are bathroom facilities make it more popular then most other peaks. Looking back, the light from all of the headlamps made it look like I-25 instead of a trail.
That's why we choose to take the loft route around the southern section of the mountain. 99% of people take the standard route and approach it from the north because it's easier. When we returned to the trail head we saw that only about five others in the log book had taken the same route as we did. The loft route really isn't that difficult, you just have to remember that a lot of the people that go the other way probably don't have any business being on the mountain. I have never seen so many people climb a 14er in jeans and tennis shoes. Then again, a lot of people just hike partway up the trail on the standard route to the area known as the "keyhole".
We took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference. Our party was the first on the route this morning, so we didn't meet up with anyone else until the very end where the two routes meet at "the homestretch". All in all it was a pretty fun day. Our route involved a lot more scrambling, which beats walking any day of the week. By the end of the day, even though we had descended down the standard route via the keyhole at a causal pace, my feet and knees ached. Half a marathon and a mile of elevation gain is a pretty big day. In terms of those two numbers, it's one of the bigger days I've had on a mountain.
I didn't realize until now that this trip was a milestone event. I've now finished all of the 14ers on the Front Range. Only 75% of 14ers and six more mountain ranges left...
- Heading up the loft route as the sun rises. A granite formation resembling a chimney
- Coming up to the loft with the summit in view. Still about three hours to summit
- Descending so that we can cross the Notch before Keplinger's Couloir
- Sunrise hitting the other side of the granite formation resembling a chimney
- We were constantly surrounded by tall granite walls. How did that rock get there?
- A good look at the final push up to where our route meets up with the main trail
- Action shot. I had just crossed over from the other side of the big slab
- The homestretch, aka the bottleneck. This is the last climb with the summit in view
- Another shot of the homestretch. You can also make out a unique feature: painted route markers
- A look across the narrows, an exposed crossing on the standard route. It's that not big of a deal
- Getting ready to slide down a slab of rock as we were hiking down from the summit
- The often hard to spot "Clark's Arrow"
- Nathan and I at the summit. We didn't stay too long since the wind picked up
- A shot of the misty mountains between the summit of Longs and Pikes Peak in the distance
- The keyhole and shelter. Many casual hikers make it this point at 13,000 feet and then turn around
- You can see that this is a popular stop along the trail. It's probably five miles back to the trail head
- There were people even more crazy then us on Long's Peak today
- Nathan using the facilities unique to this peak. They even had TP and hanitizer
- Money shot of Longs. Our route up to the loft followed the large snow field to the left
- We sat for awhile and took in the view since our initial approach was in the dark
