Longs Peak

Longs Peak (14,255ft) – highpoint of Rocky Mountain National Park

Eric and Jake, Nov 11, 2019

We were in Colorado for the long Veteran’s Day weekend, with the goal to hit some national park highpoints. Longs Peak was high enough to warrant acclimation since we were both coming from sea level, so we decided to first hit the Great Sand Dunes highpoint (10,520ft), then the Black Canyon of the Gunnison highpoint (9,040ft). That would give us only a one-day weather window, Monday, to hit Longs Peak.

By Sunday afternoon we had climbed Poison Spring Hill in Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, and we checked the latest weather forecast as we were driving out. It had been sunny all the past week state-wide, but the wind had been very high on Longs Peak, around 70mph many days. The forecast was for a snowstorm to pass through Sunday night ending around 8am on the summit, and winds dying after the storm with temperatures plunging to and staying in the lower single digits on the summit. It seemed like we might just barely be able to squeeze in a summit attempt between the precipitation ending and our flights taking off that evening, so we decided to go for it.

After about 6 hours of driving we got to the trailhead. There was no entrance station and the campground nearby was closed, so we just decided to sleep at the trailhead. We packed up gear and went to bed around 8:30am as the first snowflakes were falling. A group of hikers came back around 10:30pm and left, leaving us the only car in the lot.

We woke up at 3:15am in the peak of the storm, and I was not optimistic about our chances of success. The parking lot was covered in snow and it was snowing hard. The car thermometer said 11F. But we suited up anyways and were moving around 4am.

Luckily the foot or two of snow on the trail was well packed down and we easily hiked up in microspikes. We took ou time, reaching treeline around 5:15am. It was windy and snowing, but there were starting to be breaks in the clouds as the sun rose. The snow was much thinner above treeline, and the snow finally let up as the visibility improved.

By 7:45am we crested Granite Pass at 12,000ft and saw around the corner that the snow cover was still very thin. So

we ditched our snowshoes there and continued up the switchbacks. At the edge of the boulderfield Jake was getting hit hard by the altitude and decided to descend back to the car while I continued on solo. I’d read of crowds of hundreds of people on Long’s Peak in the summer, but I had the whole climb to myself this day.

I rock-hopped through the boulderfield and scrambled up to the keyhole by 8:45am. There was a blast of wind as I passed through, but then it died down to near zero on the other side. I scrambled on the icy and snowy ledges in my microspikes following the painted red and yellow trail markers. Eventually I reached a section sketchy enough to make me switch to crampons and pull out my ice ax.

I continued scrambling carefully until I reached the trough. From there I postholed up less-exposed terrain all the way to the big chockstone at the top. There I ditched my hiking poles, strapped my ice ax to my pack, and started up. It was fun 3rd class scrambling in crampons, though it looked suspiciously like someone had chiseled out holds on the right side to make it easier.

Beyond the chockstone was what I expected to be the crux of the route – the narrows. I got blasted by wind as I crossed over a ridge, then I started the narrow ledge on the edge of a cliff. The ledge was a bit sketchy covered in ice and snow, but was wide enough to be reasonably safe. I squeezed behind some boulders, tiptoed on some narrow ice sections, then scrambled up some boulders and was finished. Then I got to the real sketchy part, the homestretch.

The last stretch to the summit was a steep slabby ramp intermittently covered in thin snow and ice. In the summer it would be an easy friction slab to march up, but that wouldn’t really work this time. I tried to either stick to snow that was deep enough to get a shallow step kicked in, or crampon on dry rock sections, but often had to do some delicate frontpointing in the thin verglass.

By 10:15am I finished the homestretch and found myself on the summit. There had been no wind on the narrows or the homestretch, but now it was very windy. Luckily the strong sun somehow made the single digit temps and wind feel not too cold, as long as I had my balaclava and all my layers on.

I took some pictures, tagged the summit, then turned around at 10:30am. From what I read I considered myself quite fortunate to have the summit and most of the mountain completely to myself. I carefully downclimbed the homestretch, scrambled across the narrows, and scrambled down around the chockstone to my poles. From there I

plunge-stepped down the trough, then traversed the exposed ledge back to the keyhole.

At the keyhole I switched out of the crampons and barebooted back down. At granite pass I passed two hikers descending. I’m guessing they turned around at the boulderfield, though they didn’t have ice axes so maybe they weren’t intending to summit anyways.

I jogged back down, eventually reaching the trailhead at 1pm. Jake was waiting at the car and feeling better. We quickly packed up and headed back to Denver to catch our flights out that night.

 

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