Belated TR: Long's Peak

Cause of the events of the last week, I haven't had time or the energy to post up a write up of a little outing that I had up Long's Peak Keyhole route about two weeks ago, so now that I've gained some time and energy, enjoy!
So Long's Peak is the furthest north 14er and one that you can see from pretty much anywhere in Denver, Golden etc. And oddly enough, in my last 3 years of being here, I've never been up it. I'm assuming because most of my 14ers have been skiing oriented and the ski lines on Long's are burly and typically one of those things that you might not ski unless you had a particular goal in mind. So when Mike emailed me a few weeks ago asking if I'd be interested on a moonlit ascent of Long's, my first reaction was "Crap it's a friday, I'll miss out on work." My second reaction was "I'll make it happen somehow".
So that being said my dumb ass decided to go to work for 3 hours before heading up to Boulder to meet up with the gang to go up Long's. This was very very dumb. So essentially I warmed up for a 14 mile hike with 5,000 ft of vertical gain by riding a 150 lb tri-cycle around for three hours. I'll reference why I'm making a big deal about this later....
So we met up, got up to RMNP and started the booking it approach up the long trail to Long's Peak at around 1:30 pm. The first half passed pretty uneventfully other than our moonlit ascent was screwed by the huge cloud sitting over the peak. Mike had reccomended using a red headlamp to light the way as it would help with night vision. He was totally right about this but wrong about the fact that it totally screwed my balance point. The first half of the Long's trail is pretty smooth and easy but the second we hit the boulder field I was crashing left and right until I switched to a white lamp and suddenly I could see again.
Now reaching the boulderfield is usually a pretty long hike in. For some reason we did it in about 2 hours or so. About this point, between the light color issue and the fact that I'd worked that night I was getting pretty freakin' wrecked and starting to move really slowly and frankly started to feel pretty damn bad. We'd had an arrangement to regroup by the keyhole but by the time I got there everyone had taken off. (In the after discussion, I think this was the best for the group FYI)
Most people know that it takes me a lot to lose my temper or my cool in this matter, but between how wrecked I was feeling and then finding no one there I kinda lost it. In retrospect, I'd simply pushed myself a little too hard and my emotions were all sorts of jacked up at this point. I polished off the last of my coffee and because I was beginning to be able to see the trough with the sun coming up I decided to push on aways.



Some of the views as the sun began to lap up RMNP
So it should be mentioned Long's Peak standard route is really not a hike. It's a scramble through some pretty high consequence terrain. The ledges are huge, and the climbing never harder than Class 3 but if you fall, your going quite a ways. Add this in to the amount of people that this peak sees and I'm astounded that there aren't more accidents up there. The trough is really what I'd call the real beginning of the route too. Big exposure, easy scrambling, actually extremely fun too. Mentally, I calmed down and actually began to enjoy the route finding and climbing as I worked my way slowly higher. I managed to actually catch up to half of the group just below the narrows. Coupling this with teh beautiful light hitting the Ships Prow and Mt. Meeker (I think, must check a map on that one) it became a pretty special experience.
So this was not the end of teh unpleasantness on this trip, and I'm going to publicly apologize for being an asshole at high altitude to Mike at this point. Seriously dude, my bad. I was feeling super crappy and I'm sorry I bitched at you when I passed you in the narrows. Feel free to bitch at me at some high altitude vantage point at some time.

A few climbing shots

So when the trough ends, you come into this system of ledges called the narrows, once again super easy climbing, big exposure. Other than the above mentioned bitching at (sorry again dude) this was really fun! The exposure added a nice little sphincter clenching scariness to the otherwise easy ledgewalking that led up to the homestretch. I'm going to add, I looked up and saw tons and tons of 5th class lines all around it that I'm going to have to do some research into because the crack systems and granite looked killer. So at this point we were almost at the top when we presented with the final problem, a slabby cracky wall known as the homestretch.


Shots of the Trough and Allan climbing the Homestretch

Once again a little route finding presented nothing harder than 3rd class, although a fall would have been an absolutly massive catastrophe. At this point I'd realized that the best thing for me was to just continue up at my own slow pace and relax and enjoy the easy jams and scrambling. The beautiful thing about this peak is that it gives you a wonderful alpine climbing experience. With the harder rock and exposure, long hike in, the second you crest the summit you feel as though you've gained a peak of massive importance. When I crested the summit and looked over the diamond all I could see was clouds thousands of feet below me covering the front range and to my west the vast expanses of the Indian Peaks and Rocky Mountain National Park. It was a beautiful moment especially with it all bathed in golden morning light. We summited at 10 of 7 so it was about a 6 hour trip up.

Goofy lookin' summit shot, can you tell I'm sleep deprived?



So this brings me to the other problem with Long's. Crowds. We got an early start so on the way up and at the summit there weren't that many folks but I would NEVER EVER start any later than we did because on the way down there were HORDES coming up the trough. The other problem with this is a lot of the terrain in the trough is loose scree. If I ever do this again I will be wearing a rock climbing helmet because I was living in terror that someone was gonna knock a rock down and kill me the entire way down.
There should really be a better education about the terrain and weather on long's. I saw people going up in Chacos, cotton t-shirts, jeans, carrying a single 8 oz water bottle. Seriously if there was a storm or something they'd be in some severe trouble. Last soapbox moment, PEOPLE PICK UP YOUR FREAKIN' GARBAGE! There was so much trash all over the standard route. It was absolutly foul.
Other than that I had a great time, the descent was pretty uneventful (as all good descents should be) other than a quick stop at the Chasm Lake viewing point to snap shots of the Diamond (god I want to climb that) and a beautiful view of the peak, I pretty much popped in my Ipod and let passion pit ease my weary legs down the peak.
Lessons learned, seriously pay attention to how my body is feeling on stuff like this....and don't pedicab before hand :) I would really like to go do this route again at somepoint, in a more rested state though as I feel like I'll enjoy it way more