Longs Peak, Colorado 9/12/04

[dave p.]

Hiked Longs Peak in Colorado on 9/12/04. Arrived in Denver thursday night, stayed at an airport hotel. Friday we rented a car and drove up to Rocky Mountain National Park, we hiked up Estes Cone (11006') for an acclimitization hike, 7.6 miles r/t. Saturday we drove up Trail Ridge Road to 12,000', got out and walked around for a while. Sunday we started hiking Longs Peak at 2:30 am. Quite a line of headlamps as your hiking up. Got to the boulderfield at 6:00am, beautiful Alpenglow on the peaks. Thru the keyhole, onto the Narrows, no pics here, I didn't want to stop to take out the camera, lots of exposure. The trough was a bit icy, and long. Then up the homestretch to the summit. It was about 45 degrees on the summit and windy, so we didn't stay long. Now all we had to do was reverse our steps and get down, another 7.5 miles back. Long trip back but we made it in about 13 hours total. It was a great hike on a fantastic peak. Acclimitization was very important, the altitude did not bother me as I thought it might. Pictures at:
http://community.webshots.com/user/dmp217

 

[Rik]

Nice trip! I spent a couple of great nights in the boulderfield last year in June. We only climbed as far as the keyhole because only those with crampons were making summit and we didn't have ours. Wonderful place! I took several pictures at different times of day in the boulderfield. We camped there alone one night and then with two other groups of two the next. Very spectacular place. Thanks for sharing your trip.

 

[WalksWithBlackflies]

I was also going to climb Longs on the 12th, but a ranger told me they had ice left over from last year and 24" of new snow on that side of the mountain. He called the Trough a "technical ice climb". I assume from your post that this wasn't true?

 

[dave p.]

Longs Peak

There was a little bit of ice left over from last year, and they had 2-4 inches of new snow a couple days before. It was warm on Saturday and by Sunday most of it was gone. The rangers are very conservative and had posted technical conditions for Sunday.
I guess they're just being careful. If you look at the pictures you can see some snow in the trough but it was easy to pick your way around it.

 

[Jim lombard]

I'm sitting here looking at a picture I took of Longs from Chasm lake. We just did a dayhike to picnic there in 2000, what a starkly beautiful place. Nice report. One of my favorite views of Longs is from the summit of Twin Sisters.