Longs Peak

Despite the title of this post, I'll start out with a picture of Mt Rainier I took last week during fieldwork in Washington.

We have some impressive mountains here in Colorado, the subject of the remainder of this post being one of them, but our peaks don't hold a candle to the Cascade volcanoes. They rise, seemingly out of nowhere (well, out of a magma plume, but I don't want to get too terribly dorky here) and in Rainier's case thrust 14000 feet from sea level, utterly dwarfing the mountains around them.

And at any point, they could blow their tops, as Mt St Helens did three years before I was born. 

Back to Colorado.

After I got back from Washington, I decided the time had come to run Longs. I have lived in Boulder for years now, seeing this mountain dominating the skyline every time I drove up 36 from Denver, and yet for no apparent reason I had never climbed it. So, Saturday morning, after taking the chance to sleep in, I decided to give it a go. 

I reached the trailhead late enough that I had to park a good half-mile down the road. I expected as much, arriving at 10AM when most hikers leave between 2 and 3 in the morning. Remembering to put on sunscreen, I strapped on my UD Katoa waistpack, grabbed an extra water bottle in a UD Quickdraw, and headed up the shallow trail, 5100' of climbing and 7 1/2 miles of running and scrambling ahead of me. 

As sometimes is the case, I felt sluggish the first two or three miles. When I got up out of the forest, and to treeline, I started to feel a little more energetic, and picked up the pace a bit. Past the Chasm Lake junction, I felt even better and proceeded up to the Boulder field in just over half an hour. The boulder field, I think, was the most fun I had on the trip. Rather than follow the track, I regressed back to my days in Minnesota, rock-hopping along the shores of Lake Superior, and took a direct route to the keyhole, crossing the field and making it to the keyhole in under 15 minutes. 

The Keyhole

Beyond this, I had been a little nervous about the route. I knew it grew significantly more exposed and more of a scramble than a run. I surprised myself, though, by finding this section unimposing, and actually quite fun. I started to run into more people descending the route, here, and was often forced to take a higher or lower route across the Narrows, and a steeper route up the Trough, scrambling in truth now where I had danced across the Narrows.

Around here people started to notice me (the bright green shirt might have helped) and began to a) get out of my way and b) ask me when I had started and how long I expected to take to get to the summit. When I told them 10AM and 2:30, respectively, most decided I was crazy. I neglected to mention Tony's recent 1:42 up this route.

I did not, unfortunately, make it to the summit in the 2:30 I had hoped. I realized this wouldn't happen while scrambling the Home Stretch, and let it go. I finally crested the top at 12:36, exactly 2:36 from the car.

By this point, though, some storm clouds were forming, and after a few quick pics, I took off down the same route I went up.

The weather that chased me all the way down and caught me in the parking lot.

The summit. I was amazed how huge it was, though I had known and expected it.

Looking back down the Homestretch, some climbers are visible in the distance.

I took my time descending, and by this point my quads were telling me it would be a long run back to the car. By the boulder field, I was less running and more picking my way, even taking the path for a brief period. Nonetheless, the last several miles were quick, as I (barely) outpaced the rain to my car.

Total time running was 4:34. I took some time to look around on the way down, making my car-to-car time (including the extra half mile each way) was 5 hours flat.

All in all, a very fun day on the mountain. I learned that I am, to my surprise, quite comfortable on the semi-scrambling bits. I am also, apparently, quite surprisingly quick on these sections, choosing to bolt forward in short bursts, taking short breaks when needed, rather than move at a steady slog. In the words of one other climber, who I saw on my way up, and passed again on my way down the trough, I "crushed it."

And I caught the bug: looking forward to another adventure on Meeker this weekend.