Longs Peak - 14,255 ft

Date: 8-28-2005

Climbers: George Barnes and Brian Schuster

Route:  North Face II, Class 5.4

RT distance:  ~14 miles

RT time: 11 hours 40 minutes

Time to summit:  7 hours

Time on summit:  ~1 hour

Time to trailhead: 3 hours 40 minutes

Elevation gain:  4,850 feet

Coordinates of TH:  40° 16.37'N, 105° 33.45'W

Coordinates of belay:  40° 15.442' N, 105° 36.987'W

Coordinates of summit:  40° 15.28'N, 105° 36.95'W

USGS Quadrangles: Longs Peak

GPS Track (jpeg): Click HERE

Trip Report:

Beta:

   As of 8-28-05 you'd be hard pressed to find any use for an ice axe or crampons on this route (though that could change in the coming weeks).  Rock shoes are pretty much unnecessary, though a layer of verglass does make for some spicy climbing on the route's crux moves.

Historical:

    The north face (Cables Route) used to be the standard route up Longs.  In 1925 two sets of large diameter steel cables were placed over the length of the route's technical section, secured with enormous eyebolts in the rock.  These cables aided climbers on the most difficult part of the route, but by 1973 the Park Service realized that steel cables, lightning, and large numbers of climbers might not be a great combination (not to mention that jugging up a cable to cover technical ground isn't exactly noble).  The cables were removed, but the eyebolts remain in the rock and provide bomber belay/rappel anchors.  It goes without saying that using an 80 year eyebolt as your only anchor is less than inspired (that's a lot of freeze-thaw cycles).

Pre-climb:

    After a climb of the Keyhole in August 2004, Brian and I were ready for something more challenging in 2005.  Saturday night we found a great campsite off a forest service road just north of Meeker park.  We knew we needed an early start for the long day ahead, so we retired just before 9 PM.  I stretched out in the back of my Jeep and read Joe Simpson's This Game of Ghosts, while Brian strung his hammock between a couple trees.

Climb:

    Our close campsite gets us to the Longs Peak Ranger Station shortly before 4 AM.  Despite our early hour, the parking lot has long since filled, though we find an apparently un-noticed parking area on the road to the Longs Peak Campground.  This saves us a little walking, something we'll appreciate later.

   As expected, the trailhead is crawling with people and we have to wait just to sign the trail register.  After signing in, we establish a brisk pace up the trail.  We're schlepping more gear this time (ropes and pro), but we still manage to match our 1:20 time to the Chasm Junction (with no small thanks to my ipod).  As before, we pass no less than 40 people in the 3.5 miles to the junction.  After a 20 minute break we slog up the stairs to Granite Pass and make it to the edge of the Boulderfield by sunrise.  The alpenglow wasn't the most spectacular I've seen, but the Meeker-Longs cirque doesn't need alpenglow to be impressive.

Sunrise Alpenglow Panorama (400 KB)

   The continuum of experience and personalities on Longs is always a source of amusement for me.  Of course you have your usual suspects carrying only gallon jugs of water and no extra clothing, but this year's Boulderfield Amusement Prize goes to a middle aged white male in Rasta-riffic dreads carrying a boom box blasting some funky new age music.  Nice.

North Face panorama (route begins at far left end of the snow)

   At the Boulderfield Brian and I load up on food, knowing that the climb ahead won't give us many opportunities to snack.  After our break we start rock hopping our way up to the Meeker-Longs ridge.  We hit the ridge lower and farther east than most parties would, though this provides some interesting views of the cirque.  The East Face is beyond incredible from the vantage at Chasm View.  I took a vertical panorama of the face, though it doesn't begin to convey the scale of the face.  From here I can see that I won't need my ice axe for the remaining route, so I cache it under a rock (with a half a dozen others!).

   Lambs Slide          East Face

    As we make our way to the base of the north face a party of four meets us on the ridge.  We decide to let them climb the technical pitch first (and we take note of where the eyebolts and anchors are located).  The route preview was nice, though we spend close to an hour waiting to get our turn on the route.

    Brian has more trad climbing experience than me, so he takes the first lead and I clean his gear after belaying him to the upper eye bolts.  It's worth mentioning that though this climb is only rated 5.4, the difficulty level was upped a few notches by a nice layer of verglass (thin ice) on much of the route.

    On a related note, I have to give kudos to Five Ten on their Guide Tennies.  I wore them for the entire day instead of switching from hiking boots to rock shoes like some did.  They're a cross between an approach shoe and a full on rock shoe, intended for fourth class routes and easy class 5.  They gave me an extra helping of security on the face, and were comfortable all day long too.  I used them with some low cut OR gaiters to keep out the rocks.  Brian's an animal and just led the pitch in his Lowa hikers.

Brian leading off     George following    George after pitch

Above the first pitch some parties choose to rope up for another short pitch, but Brian and I agreed that the climbing looked like reasonable class 4 at most and we'd solo it to move a little faster.  The summit is just a short jaunt from here, and only takes us 30 minutes of scrambling to reach.  I've included a few pictures of the stretch below the summit, because I had a hard time finding any when I was looking for beta on this area.

    Despite the crowds on top, this was without doubt one of my "sweeter" summits.  Doing a technical route (albeit an easy one), makes for a rewarding day.  The weather looked decent, so we lounged for close to an hour before retracing our steps.

    We carefully poked our way down the upper slopes of the face.  A fall definitely wouldn't be pretty, and any rocks that we loosen could make their way onto climbers below us.

More verglass!

    Back at the eyebolts we set up for a rappel on my single 60m rope.  From the lower of the two upper bolts, my doubled rope got us to the bolts in the middle of the pitch.  From here one more rappel got us past nearly all of the routes difficulties.

Rappelling down

    At Chasm View we could watch climbers making their way up the Diamond.  The photo below shows a handful of climbers and gives you some idea of the size of the face, especially when compared to the above vertical panorama.

    The trek back to the Boulderfield is uneventful, though the weather is beginning to look interesting.  For most of the hike back to Granite Pass we experience a graupel/rain mix, but not enough to make the ground wet.

    The trail back to the parking lot is never ending, I think this stretch is better done in the dark.  We get back at 3:40 PM, for a RT time just 10 minutes longer than last year on the Keyhole.