Tom Grundy's Longs Peak Page

We finished Pikes Peak at a reasonable hour, but it was a long way to the Longs Peak trailhead, and from what I had gathered, they were pretty aggressive about you not sleeping in the parking lot there. It was dark by the time we arrived and I was all for stopping at a pullout a little early, but Sam was more casual about the potential to get rousted (and the PLC looks less like a vehicle one would sleep in). So we pulled in and went to sleep. Some time later that night we did get rousted. I was deep asleep and it took me a while to surface. Then I blearily crawled out to realize that the ranger was someone I had climbed with in the past. He was just doing his job and in fact just a few hundred yards down the road was out of the park and we were allowed to sleep in our vehicles there. It wasn't as flat, but didn't require a whole lot of effort to move.

We didn't have a crazy early morning, and even had breakfast in daylight before we started around 7:30. There are a lot of horror stories and numerous deaths on this route, but in most the weather is usually a huge factor. There was a storm potentially coming in a few days, but if we could pull it off today we would be done. As usual we started out in the trees for a while before getting above tree line with more expansive views. The little bit of fall foliage was nice. The Diamond is a most impressive cliff on one side of this peak and someday I would like to climb it.

breakfast in the daylight

Raquel heads up the trail with the Diamond in the distance

The Diamond

rocky Mountain National Park is pretty scenic

the keyhole

We just hiked up the obvious trail for most of the way to the keyhole but right before it the trail sort of disappeared into some large talus. It was obvious where we had to go, just not obvious what the easiest route was. There is a cool little stone hut right before the keyhole. We stopped there for a snack

vertical pan from the keyhole

Once through the keyhole the route is much more scrambley. There were some spraypainted marks on the rocks and some cairns but mostly it was pretty obvious from the descriptions where you had to go. Traversing across the slope, then up a huge trough, then across "the narrows" - a skinny ledge on a slope - before the final scramble up to the 14,255 ft summit plateau around noon.

paint marking the trail

nice cliffs as seen from near the top of the trough

pan from the start of the narrows

Sam and Raquel from the other side of the narrows

some of the last scrambling

almost there

There were plenty of others on the route and on the summit but they never really got in the way. We took a number of photos and relaxed a bit before the long scramble and hike back. We saw a coyote off in the distance and got down around 5:30 a little sad but mostly relieved to be done and to have pulled it off. A few days later I tweaked my knee with a pole assisted downhill jump (as I had many times over the summer) fortunately I was done.

summit posing

supported by my friends

this was not my finest handstand

descending near the top

there was some nice trailwork

panorama from near the summit to the eastish (standing a bit south of the top of the diamond)

Summary of September 19, one 14er, about 14.5 miles and 5,100 feet of elevation gain including some solid scrambling. A long day, but not exceedingly so - we were in pretty decent shape and well acclimated by now.

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