Longs Peak Trip Report 08/15/2007

Peak(s):	Longs Peak - 14,259 feet
Date Posted:	08/15/2007
Modified:	08/16/2007
Date Climbed:	08/08/2007
Author:	siefker

Topographic Psychoanalysis of Longs
The night was thinly cool. The thought of Genesis, the Mexico City dancer, was like a light blanket to curl up with as I drifted off to sleep at 7:30 p.m.. Either the thin air at the trailhead campground or the thought of Genesis, made my heart strangely race ahead of itself. I wondered if a heart attack wasn‘t coming on. It wasn‘t. Even though the Rangers at the trailhead office shared their fears for me about not having acclimated to the high altitude having come from the lowlands of Iowa only the day before, I wasn‘t too concerned. I was training 4060 minutes a day six days a week and lifting weights in order to train for a 1:30 half marathon. Yet there I was drifting off to sleep and my resting heart rate wasn‘t anywhere near resting. Finally just as the dancing of Genesis in my head calmed me into a deep careless sleep, the cold hard reality of the words: ‘Gotta get up! woke me. Such is the nature of short naps and beautiful Mexican dancersthey can only tease. It was 12:02 a.m. We had done the usual online research about Longs Peak. Most websites suggested getting up at 3:00 a.m. in order to summit Longs Peak before the daily summer thunderstorms hit. My group consisting of my brother Dave Siefker, nephew Bryan Siefker, and friends Brian Wood, Laddy Peck and his son Ryan Peck, wanted no excuses for not reaching the summit. Four of us had spent over a week the previous year traversing over a hundred and twenty miles in a failed attempt to summit Younts Peak in Wyoming. This summer we needed a summit and getting up three hours earlier than anyone else was just one little thing we could do to ensure fewer chances of not making it to the top. In the mountain night I put on my old tan polyester pants and a thin gray wool shirt. It was a cool fifty degrees at nine thousand feet. Our packs were ready to slip on and we were off on the road with our headlamps in less than a half hour. At the trailhead we met five other college students who were friends of Ryanwho would hike with us. Although their names slipped by me, one kid‘s name didn‘t: Mike. He had on sandals, blue jeans, and a pack with beer in it. Mike made me think about Longs‘ indifference. The mountain didn‘t care if I had well-worn Vasques, warm and quick drying wool and polyester clothes, and extra everything for nearly every possible contingency in my pack or if Mike had on sandals, jeans, and beer. The mountain didn‘t care whether we made it up, if we lived or died in the process. It just didn‘t care. I admired that about the mountain. As I took the lead no one seemed to want at the trailhead, I made it a point to watch how things went for Mike. How much would he shame my high tech hiking gear? Also because I took the lead, perhaps the idea of being the first one up Longs that morning hit me first. I respected the mountain and held back on the relatively smooth trail through the montane forest near the trailhead. My body made constant checks in terms of rubbing, scrapping, and the slightest irritations. All was well and I felt great to be moving up the mountain in the night. As we approached the alpine tundra the sky above and the plains below opened up. The stars were as sharp as cut glass. The plains were like a lake as the light of the stars and the city lights of Boulder were like a mirror reflection of each otherwith us going up the long ridge between the two. Finally we crested a pass to the other side of the world. A bright light far off in the north shown like a lighthouseguiding us nowhere we wanted to go. Instead we turned southwest toward the Keyhole. There we met a lone guy in a government issue Forest Service poncho with a hand-held flashlight. If he was a government employee he seemed to be enjoying his job at three in the morning. As we snaked our way up the switchbacks and the air grew thinner, so did our patience with minor irritations related to our gear and each other. My headlight grew faint. Dave became irritated with the pace. He and my nephew Bryan were repeatedly walking farther and farther back. We would wait. They‘d catch up. We‘d go on. Wait. They‘d catch up and so on. It irritated no one but Dave who voiced his opinion of the group pace at the beginning of the Boulderfield. He said as he caught up with us, ‘I came here to have fun. I‘m not in a race. We‘ll go alone if we have to. The words of something I had read came to mind, ‘Everyone must go their own pace up Longs. No one said a word as Dave wondered off to take a poop on the rocks. With his headlight on, his silhouette was visible as a warning in the night reading: Man taking shitBeware! Finally Ryan‘s friends caught up to us. Mike had replaced the sandals with running shoes. Up the mountain the Keyhole was barely visible in the light of dawn and looked like merely a stone‘s throw away. Down the long trail below the Boulderfield we could see many headlights winding up the trail like cars moving slowly up a highway. Sitting at the edge of the rock field my sweat started to make me cold and I decided to get moving in order to warm up. We followed the heaps of rocks like ad hoc trail blazes until any semblance of a trail disappeared in the jumble of rock. In the Boulderfield the younger legs of the college students were noticeable. My legs had already lost some springiness and cushion between the joints. While they were hopping like mountain goats from one rock to another, I assessed the hardness of the rock compared with the fragility of my body and picked my way through the granite minefield with much more caution. The Boulderfield wasn‘t enjoyable as a mortal. The immortal college kids made the climb look fun. The inaccessible remoteness of the area coupled with bone breaking holes between the car-sized rocks tempered any youthfulness my thirty-seven-year-old legs could muster. I made a mental note to myself that I was the third person to reach the Keyhole. I didn‘t want to admit to myself that I was keeping trackbut I was. By the time our group reached the Keyhole, many young people in other groups of younger fresher legs reached the narrow ledge and rested there with us. In fact, the whole Indian-head-like mouth of the Keyhole was full of people. I realized that Longs is like a modern American pilgrimage. America was going up and down a mountain. By sunrise the trail was becoming a highway of hikers. There were girls in matching helmets roped to a man. Kids. Older men and young college aged sons. Womenyoung and healthy and enjoying themselves. Some gripped in fear. Some sick. Some laughing. Some in a hurry. Some taking breaks with nearly every step. Navigating included looking out for people as well as rocks. From the ledge we watched the sun rise on the huge valley below the Westside of the Keyhole as well on the massive Boulderfield. It was like Longs was a giant stump of an old tree. Someone had taken a giant ax to the tree and chopped vertically with woodchips of stone flying out for over a milewith larger ones at the base and smaller and smaller ones progressively farther out. Up close the igneous rock was becoming increasingly sharp to the touch. For no reason at all, I left my gloves in the pack and decided to push on with bare hands. Not advisable. My nephew Bryan, like many who reach the Keyhole, peeked through and couldn‘t see himself going on. To the disapproval of my brother I told my nephew, ‘We hall have different limits. You have to know what you‘re capable of up here. After I pushed on aiming for the yellow and red bulls-eye markers, Bryan went out on the first stage of the Narrows and came to a point where he suddenly stopped. ‘That‘s it. He said and turned back. We had all seen the Internet pictures of the Narrows. Although they looked bad both on the web and in real life, I noticed that as I got into the narrow ledges there was something deceptive about the initial view of the Narrows from the Keyhole. The rocks were much larger than they appeared from the Keyhole. So for scale if Bryan could‘ve seen a human picking his or her way through the Narrows, he would‘ve seen that there was actually more room there to move around than it appeared. As we wined down around the northwest face of the mountain we came to the Througha very steep and rocky climb up a thousand foot trench tipped up on end. Here is where the risky rock leaping gave way to shear endurance. It was a simple matter of lungs and legs against altitude and gravity. Here is where everyone separated out according to VO2 capacity in the lungs. Although it was steep it didn‘t demand ropes or special climbing gear. Since the top of the Through never seemed to near, I put my head down and decided not to look up. It helped. After treating the long Through as a cardio-vascular workout, my yucca walking sticks jetting out of the top of my pack like two antennae hit against something on the trail. It was the Chokestonea large boulder blocking any easy route to the ledge overlooking a southern panoramic view. There was not an easy way around it. I went straight up it grabbing ample handholds and holding my breath in hope I wouldn‘t fall backwards. Two eighteen year olds moved up and over the Chokestone with monkey-like ease. The three of us sat on the ledge looking back north down the Through and out south at the Front-Range of the Rockies heading south. No one was in view looking down the Through. Here was the sequel to the Narrows. Only this time the ledge was higher and more vertical. Something was said about falling and I said, ‘The thing about rock like this is that fifteen feet and a thousand feet are the same. Both will kill you. With that I popped an Ibuprofen because I had felt a cramp coming on as I scaled around the Chokestone. I also left my yucca sticks behind. The ledge was not only narrow, but it was also short and angled out the wrong way. I didn‘t want my poles catching rock overhead and throwing me off balance. We slowly picked our way through single file since there was no room to hike side by side. Then one of the boys who had climbed the mountain before said, ‘There‘s the Homestretch. Sure enough the mountain ran out of rock. The summit was in view. Again here was a moment of simplicity. Rock. Gravity. Sun. Water. And just me and the mountain. Everything reduced to the simplest terms. Climb and Live. I left the eighteen year olds behind because I became instantly committed to the idea of being the first to summit that day. With the doubts of the Rangers the day before saying how we weren‘t properly acclimated, I pushed on harder and faster with no stops. I had to admit I was breathing hard and the air was very thin. The Homestretch was a culmination of everything we had facedhigh altitude and steep slippery rock with a meaningful ledge to the right. It was as though the hike was on a bell curve. It started easy and the level of intensity peaked with the summit and then descended again in a perfect bell shaped curve. I was on the apex of what Longs Peak could dish out. Of the three factorselevation, incline, and slipperiness, the latter was the most disturbing for me. The Homestretch has natural springs with water running down like leaks. It added another element of difficulty to the climb. Yet the climb was wholly doable. However, I believe that had climbers not known that hundreds of people reach the summit every summer day, the Keyhole would be a natural turning point away from the peak. But since we knew so many climb it, I thought, ‘Well if they can do itthen I should be able to do it. That thought carried me through some of tight spots like the Homestretch. Then at 7:18, five hours and twenty-two minutes after startingI summited! There wasn‘t any big enlightenment. No prayers. No whoops. No profound thoughts. I had just done what hundreds would do that day. As one hiker responded upon cresting the summit after Laddy said, ‘You made it! He quipped, ‘Of course! as though he were annoyed that someone would think it a big feat. My main thought on the summit alone with Longs Peak was where I could discreetly unload a stomach-full of too much granola before the two teenagers reached the top. I quickly sat atop the highest rock with a USGS marker reading 14,255 and signed the trail log. Then I quickly resealed the PVC pipe containing the notebook and wondered off toward the north face of the rocky summit. I let go of all that nasty granola and buried it under a pile of rocks. Whispered sorry to the mountaineven though I‘m sure it didn‘t care as much as the people to come after me. Making sure there was no trace of such a disturbing sight, I left the sight hardly satisfied with the hurried bowel movement. As I waited for my group to face the Homestretch I talked with an experienced rock climber from Missouri. He had climbed the peak in a faster time than me, but was feeling the affects of altitude sickness. He was to do the Diamond the following day. As he turned his focus to getting down he said, ‘It‘s not ‘It‘s not over till you‘re back at the car.‘ I‘ve got a shitty car that may or may not start. For me it‘s, ‘It‘s not over till you‘re in the shower. I said, ‘Good luck reaching the shower. With that he said, ‘Thanks and was the first person to descend that day. In all I was on the summit an hour and a half before my group crested, took pictures, and decided to start the most dangerous part of the daythe descent. I looked for Mike and sure enough he too made it to the top. There he popped a beer and relaxed. I made a note to myself that Mike wasn‘t the only one in running shoes and what I would call ‘non-traditional hiking gear.‘ It didn‘t matter. Like with everythingthere‘s more than one way to the top of the mountain. But now that I was on top, I only cared about getting down safely. I secretly wanted a helicopter or a ski lift. I thought, ‘Give me all up and I‘ll eat it for breakfast. But going down and I‘ll look like an old man. My knees didn‘t like the idea of down. The mountains have too much of it. Unfortunately the whole tourist economy of Colorado is based on this one concept called gravity. The people were filing up like a line at an amusement park. It wasn‘t going to look graceful. I slid on my butt down the homestretch hoping not to tear a hole in my pants on the razor sharp rock. During the slow process of this I had one split second where I slid out-of-control until my foot caught a rock to stop the slide. It was a hard reminder of how this mountain claims one or two people a year. It wasn‘t a kind thought. It wasn‘t a kind mountain. It didn‘t care. To add to the situation a cloud blew in. You could almost see the molecules of waterlike dust floating in the air. Clouds were building around the mountain. My only thought was getting past the Boulderfield BEFORE the rain hit. The Homestretch and Upper Narrows were lined with people. Many times we had to wait our turn to pass against the flow going up. At the end of the Upper Narrows I stuffed my yucca sticks back in my pack and Brian coached me down over the Chokestone. Here too there was an out-of-control moment where Brian said, ‘Your foot is only an inch off the ground. Let go. Letting go is not a normal reaction when your feet are at 13,756 feet and the rock is as steep as a church steeple. The end of the Boulderfield and the slow-going obstacles was a refreshing thoughtkind of like the thought of Genesis the Mexican dancer. The incoherent thought went something like this: get back to her and life would be temporarily good. Get to the end of the Boulderfield and life would be easier and less hazardous. The difference was that the Boulderfield was under my control. Whereas Genesis was somewhere in the Zona Rosa of Mexico Cityin other wordsgone. ‘Get over it. Get over the mountain. Move on. Why was she coming to mind? She had nothing to do with mountains. Maybe Longs and her represented the exoticthe noveltythe passingthe opposite of everyday routineand in a wordthe wildness my tame life lacked back in Iowa. Whatever the hike symbolized it for sure meant that with each step down my knees took a pounding. The pounding of the knees settled into a thorough beating of my whole body in general. Coming down the Through and the lower Narrows was slow and it was easy to slip on gravel and send rocks tumbling down on the people below. A rock I accidentally sent down the mountain just missed Dave. It would‘ve ended his hike. It sped past him and continued down. I saw one guy hug a rock and close his eyes. It stopped. People waited for us to pass and get below them. The Through, Lower Narrows, and Keyhole came as only markers to make note of en route to the long-awaited end of the Boulderfield. They held no more meaning to me than signs I was nearing the end of the hazards. Brian, Dave, and I picked our way through the boulders. Laddy somehow flew through the bouldersleaping like someone half his age. From the summit to the end of the Boulderfield was a long ways. With so many people around it was almost impossible to stop and urinate. I noticed that when we finally did stop to pee, people accepted the fact of such human necessities and turned a graceful blind eye to it. Finally we reached the end of the rock field and I pumped some water coming out from under the field with my water purifier. Once I was finished it started to hail. From there it rained the whole rest of the way. We were off the rocks. Laddy‘s son Ryan was not. He had to cross the Boulderfield in the rain. As for the hundreds up on the summit, I couldn‘t even imagine coming down the Homestretch in the rain. One clear idea that settled in as we hiked in the rain seeing where we had passed in the nightwas how much longer the trail seemed in the daylight. We kept looking for land markers we had established on the trail in the night to gauge how far we were from the end of the trail. The pass. The long stretch on the side of the mountain. The Chasm Lake sign. The forest. The creek. The parkinglot. Etc. All of these we looked for with much anticipation. None of them gave themselves up easily. This mountain didn‘t care to give breaks. We earned every inch of it. In the course of this pounding on the body, Laddy and I had a meaningful conversation. He questioned the value of such trips. I had long ago dismissed such criticism by people who cannot understand why anyone would chose discomfort over luxury on a vacation. But Laddy and I had shared many such experiencesYounts Peak the previous year, twelve hour plus eco-challenge races, and marathons. He understood the value of physical challenge and even sacrifice for a goal. So I felt he earned the right to criticize such a vacation based on climbing mountains. I have always believed in this kind of workthis kind of challenge and discomfort in order to reach some insight about the world and myself. I didn‘t think such insight was possible through convenience. I‘d be the first to defend such trips in light of a society hell-bent on comfort, instant gratification, and obesity. Besides wasn‘t there a subtle pleasure in pushing myself through a fifteen mile / 4,500 feet ascent? All of this Laddy understood, yet we discussed our knees, shoulders, backs, and the point of it all. The only insight we were getting out of this climb was that our bodies were being abused. Shouldn‘t I have felt some pride in the fact that I had once again pushed myself through pain and achieved a goal? Wasn‘t that what life was about? Now I wasn‘t so sure. The difference now would be a trip with a little luxury injected into it. A little sitting down and doing nothing. That would be a novelty. With a good job and my own home, I have less to prove now. I had subjected myself to years of such acetic travel. I‘ve done multiple six-week canoe trips traversing whole river systems. I‘ve done over month long solo hikes and solo bike tours in the east and the southwest. I have run hundreds of races including a marathon and eco-challenge races. I was used to pain like the pain Longs could provide. It was no wonder Genesis came to mind the night before the thirteen-hour onslaught of the body. She represented pure pleasurethe most basic and simple and magical of human pleasures. Longs was as much a tease as Genesisboth a fleeting experience and a brief connection. It was foolish to think there was anything lasting with Genesis or Longs. This was not about a rigorous outdoor life. My life was back home with wife, kid, and job. Bills, car repair, mowing, etc. it was so massively real that it overwhelmed the excitement of both Genesis and Longs. Neither could jolt me from the routine back in Iowa. This was a necessary excuse to get away and breath and be outside. It usually was enough to travel this way. But there was a fundamental difference between the old travel way of life I lived ten years ago and the way I travel and live now. I used to work around my travel. Travel was the point. Work just paid the bills to get to the next place. Now I have to travel around my work. Work is the bread of life now and travel is merely a little dessert I can enjoy once or twice a year. The former life was one of limitless possibility. I could quit a job and go. Now that wasn‘t possible. I wasn‘t sure I totally missed the old life. Yet at times when faced with wide-open Rocky Mountain wildness, I felt the pain of such minutia and detail and routine about my life in Iowa and I missed the old road-going days. As I finished the trail I thought about an essay I once read by Percy Walker. He wrote about the idea that it was all right to go on a more mainstream pathlike Longs in August. I felt too old and mature to be doing trips just to make myself different from everyone else. I thought maybe it‘d be interesting to re-look at the ordinarya Longs Peak adventure that thousands do each yearnot condescendingly from a holier than thou perspective of a former vagabond, but as one who can look at the mainstream with a unique perspective and enjoy the interplay between what was and what islike how it is pleasing to look down on the seeming reflection of the stars on the lights of plains and to walk between the two. All these thoughts were raised by Laddy saying, ‘I‘m not sure I‘m into these kind of trips anymore. I could fully appreciate what he was saying. The next day we were on our way south and decided to drive up Pikes Peak in an air conditioned Suburban. I remembered the conversation with Laddy about enjoying a less intense West with a little more internal combustion helping to propel the body through it. We got to the toll road and realized it was ten dollars a person. Without another word, Laddy did a U-turn in the road. We turned south to climb another mountain and no one said one complaint about not getting to Pikes Peak in the car. Deep down I was a little relieved.

Topographic Psychoanalysis of Longs

The night was thinly cool. The thought of Genesis, the Mexico City dancer, was like a light blanket to curl up with as I drifted off to sleep at 7:30 p.m.. Either the thin air at the trailhead campground or the thought of Genesis, made my heart strangely race ahead of itself. I wondered if a heart attack wasn‘t coming on. It wasn‘t. Even though the Rangers at the trailhead office shared their fears for me about not having acclimated to the high altitude having come from the lowlands of Iowa only the day before, I wasn‘t too concerned. I was training 4060 minutes a day six days a week and lifting weights in order to train for a 1:30 half marathon. Yet there I was drifting off to sleep and my resting heart rate wasn‘t anywhere near resting. Finally just as the dancing of Genesis in my head calmed me into a deep careless sleep, the cold hard reality of the words: ‘Gotta get up! woke me. Such is the nature of short naps and beautiful Mexican dancersthey can only tease.

It was 12:02 a.m.

We had done the usual online research about Longs Peak. Most websites suggested getting up at 3:00 a.m. in order to summit Longs Peak before the daily summer thunderstorms hit. My group consisting of my brother Dave Siefker, nephew Bryan Siefker, and friends Brian Wood, Laddy Peck and his son Ryan Peck, wanted no excuses for not reaching the summit. Four of us had spent over a week the previous year traversing over a hundred and twenty miles in a failed attempt to summit Younts Peak in Wyoming. This summer we needed a summit and getting up three hours earlier than anyone else was just one little thing we could do to ensure fewer chances of not making it to the top.

In the mountain night I put on my old tan polyester pants and a thin gray wool shirt. It was a cool fifty degrees at nine thousand feet. Our packs were ready to slip on and we were off on the road with our headlamps in less than a half hour. At the trailhead we met five other college students who were friends of Ryanwho would hike with us. Although their names slipped by me, one kid‘s name didn‘t: Mike. He had on sandals, blue jeans, and a pack with beer in it. Mike made me think about Longs‘ indifference. The mountain didn‘t care if I had well-worn Vasques, warm and quick drying wool and polyester clothes, and extra everything for nearly every possible contingency in my pack or if Mike had on sandals, jeans, and beer. The mountain didn‘t care whether we made it up, if we lived or died in the process. It just didn‘t care. I admired that about the mountain.

As I took the lead no one seemed to want at the trailhead, I made it a point to watch how things went for Mike. How much would he shame my high tech hiking gear? Also because I took the lead, perhaps the idea of being the first one up Longs that morning hit me first. I respected the mountain and held back on the relatively smooth trail through the montane forest near the trailhead. My body made constant checks in terms of rubbing, scrapping, and the slightest irritations. All was well and I felt great to be moving up the mountain in the night.

As we approached the alpine tundra the sky above and the plains below opened up. The stars were as sharp as cut glass. The plains were like a lake as the light of the stars and the city lights of Boulder were like a mirror reflection of each otherwith us going up the long ridge between the two. Finally we crested a pass to the other side of the world. A bright light far off in the north shown like a lighthouseguiding us nowhere we wanted to go. Instead we turned southwest toward the Keyhole. There we met a lone guy in a government issue Forest Service poncho with a hand-held flashlight. If he was a government employee he seemed to be enjoying his job at three in the morning.

As we snaked our way up the switchbacks and the air grew thinner, so did our patience with minor irritations related to our gear and each other. My headlight grew faint. Dave became irritated with the pace. He and my nephew Bryan were repeatedly walking farther and farther back. We would wait. They‘d catch up. We‘d go on. Wait. They‘d catch up and so on. It irritated no one but Dave who voiced his opinion of the group pace at the beginning of the Boulderfield. He said as he caught up with us, ‘I came here to have fun. I‘m not in a race. We‘ll go alone if we have to. The words of something I had read came to mind, ‘Everyone must go their own pace up Longs.

No one said a word as Dave wondered off to take a poop on the rocks. With his headlight on, his silhouette was visible as a warning in the night reading: Man taking shitBeware! Finally Ryan‘s friends caught up to us. Mike had replaced the sandals with running shoes. Up the mountain the Keyhole was barely visible in the light of dawn and looked like merely a stone‘s throw away. Down the long trail below the Boulderfield we could see many headlights winding up the trail like cars moving slowly up a highway. Sitting at the edge of the rock field my sweat started to make me cold and I decided to get moving in order to warm up. We followed the heaps of rocks like ad hoc trail blazes until any semblance of a trail disappeared in the jumble of rock.

In the Boulderfield the younger legs of the college students were noticeable. My legs had already lost some springiness and cushion between the joints. While they were hopping like mountain goats from one rock to another, I assessed the hardness of the rock compared with the fragility of my body and picked my way through the granite minefield with much more caution. The Boulderfield wasn‘t enjoyable as a mortal. The immortal college kids made the climb look fun. The inaccessible remoteness of the area coupled with bone breaking holes between the car-sized rocks tempered any youthfulness my thirty-seven-year-old legs could muster. I made a mental note to myself that I was the third person to reach the Keyhole. I didn‘t want to admit to myself that I was keeping trackbut I was.

By the time our group reached the Keyhole, many young people in other groups of younger fresher legs reached the narrow ledge and rested there with us. In fact, the whole Indian-head-like mouth of the Keyhole was full of people. I realized that Longs is like a modern American pilgrimage. America was going up and down a mountain. By sunrise the trail was becoming a highway of hikers. There were girls in matching helmets roped to a man. Kids. Older men and young college aged sons. Womenyoung and healthy and enjoying themselves. Some gripped in fear. Some sick. Some laughing. Some in a hurry. Some taking breaks with nearly every step. Navigating included looking out for people as well as rocks.

From the ledge we watched the sun rise on the huge valley below the Westside of the Keyhole as well on the massive Boulderfield. It was like Longs was a giant stump of an old tree. Someone had taken a giant ax to the tree and chopped vertically with woodchips of stone flying out for over a milewith larger ones at the base and smaller and smaller ones progressively farther out. Up close the igneous rock was becoming increasingly sharp to the touch. For no reason at all, I left my gloves in the pack and decided to push on with bare hands. Not advisable.

My nephew Bryan, like many who reach the Keyhole, peeked through and couldn‘t see himself going on. To the disapproval of my brother I told my nephew, ‘We hall have different limits. You have to know what you‘re capable of up here. After I pushed on aiming for the yellow and red bulls-eye markers, Bryan went out on the first stage of the Narrows and came to a point where he suddenly stopped. ‘That‘s it. He said and turned back.

We had all seen the Internet pictures of the Narrows. Although they looked bad both on the web and in real life, I noticed that as I got into the narrow ledges there was something deceptive about the initial view of the Narrows from the Keyhole. The rocks were much larger than they appeared from the Keyhole. So for scale if Bryan could‘ve seen a human picking his or her way through the Narrows, he would‘ve seen that there was actually more room there to move around than it appeared.

As we wined down around the northwest face of the mountain we came to the Througha very steep and rocky climb up a thousand foot trench tipped up on end. Here is where the risky rock leaping gave way to shear endurance. It was a simple matter of lungs and legs against altitude and gravity. Here is where everyone separated out according to VO2 capacity in the lungs. Although it was steep it didn‘t demand ropes or special climbing gear. Since the top of the Through never seemed to near, I put my head down and decided not to look up. It helped.

After treating the long Through as a cardio-vascular workout, my yucca walking sticks jetting out of the top of my pack like two antennae hit against something on the trail. It was the Chokestonea large boulder blocking any easy route to the ledge overlooking a southern panoramic view. There was not an easy way around it. I went straight up it grabbing ample handholds and holding my breath in hope I wouldn‘t fall backwards. Two eighteen year olds moved up and over the Chokestone with monkey-like ease. The three of us sat on the ledge looking back north down the Through and out south at the Front-Range of the Rockies heading south. No one was in view looking down the Through.

Here was the sequel to the Narrows. Only this time the ledge was higher and more vertical. Something was said about falling and I said, ‘The thing about rock like this is that fifteen feet and a thousand feet are the same. Both will kill you. With that I popped an Ibuprofen because I had felt a cramp coming on as I scaled around the Chokestone. I also left my yucca sticks behind. The ledge was not only narrow, but it was also short and angled out the wrong way. I didn‘t want my poles catching rock overhead and throwing me off balance.

We slowly picked our way through single file since there was no room to hike side by side. Then one of the boys who had climbed the mountain before said, ‘There‘s the Homestretch. Sure enough the mountain ran out of rock. The summit was in view.

Again here was a moment of simplicity. Rock. Gravity. Sun. Water. And just me and the mountain. Everything reduced to the simplest terms. Climb and Live. I left the eighteen year olds behind because I became instantly committed to the idea of being the first to summit that day. With the doubts of the Rangers the day before saying how we weren‘t properly acclimated, I pushed on harder and faster with no stops. I had to admit I was breathing hard and the air was very thin. The Homestretch was a culmination of everything we had facedhigh altitude and steep slippery rock with a meaningful ledge to the right. It was as though the hike was on a bell curve. It started easy and the level of intensity peaked with the summit and then descended again in a perfect bell shaped curve. I was on the apex of what Longs Peak could dish out. Of the three factorselevation, incline, and slipperiness, the latter was the most disturbing for me. The Homestretch has natural springs with water running down like leaks. It added another element of difficulty to the climb. Yet the climb was wholly doable. However, I believe that had climbers not known that hundreds of people reach the summit every summer day, the Keyhole would be a natural turning point away from the peak. But since we knew so many climb it, I thought, ‘Well if they can do itthen I should be able to do it. That thought carried me through some of tight spots like the Homestretch.

Then at 7:18, five hours and twenty-two minutes after startingI summited!

There wasn‘t any big enlightenment. No prayers. No whoops. No profound thoughts. I had just done what hundreds would do that day. As one hiker responded upon cresting the summit after Laddy said, ‘You made it! He quipped, ‘Of course! as though he were annoyed that someone would think it a big feat. My main thought on the summit alone with Longs Peak was where I could discreetly unload a stomach-full of too much granola before the two teenagers reached the top. I quickly sat atop the highest rock with a USGS marker reading 14,255 and signed the trail log. Then I quickly resealed the PVC pipe containing the notebook and wondered off toward the north face of the rocky summit. I let go of all that nasty granola and buried it under a pile of rocks. Whispered sorry to the mountaineven though I‘m sure it didn‘t care as much as the people to come after me. Making sure there was no trace of such a disturbing sight, I left the sight hardly satisfied with the hurried bowel movement.

As I waited for my group to face the Homestretch I talked with an experienced rock climber from Missouri. He had climbed the peak in a faster time than me, but was feeling the affects of altitude sickness. He was to do the Diamond the following day. As he turned his focus to getting down he said, ‘It‘s not ‘It‘s not over till you‘re back at the car.‘ I‘ve got a shitty car that may or may not start. For me it‘s, ‘It‘s not over till you‘re in the shower. I said, ‘Good luck reaching the shower. With that he said, ‘Thanks and was the first person to descend that day. In all I was on the summit an hour and a half before my group crested, took pictures, and decided to start the most dangerous part of the daythe descent. I looked for Mike and sure enough he too made it to the top. There he popped a beer and relaxed. I made a note to myself that Mike wasn‘t the only one in running shoes and what I would call ‘non-traditional hiking gear.‘ It didn‘t matter. Like with everythingthere‘s more than one way to the top of the mountain.

But now that I was on top, I only cared about getting down safely. I secretly wanted a helicopter or a ski lift. I thought, ‘Give me all up and I‘ll eat it for breakfast. But going down and I‘ll look like an old man. My knees didn‘t like the idea of down. The mountains have too much of it. Unfortunately the whole tourist economy of Colorado is based on this one concept called gravity.

The people were filing up like a line at an amusement park. It wasn‘t going to look graceful. I slid on my butt down the homestretch hoping not to tear a hole in my pants on the razor sharp rock. During the slow process of this I had one split second where I slid out-of-control until my foot caught a rock to stop the slide. It was a hard reminder of how this mountain claims one or two people a year. It wasn‘t a kind thought. It wasn‘t a kind mountain. It didn‘t care.

To add to the situation a cloud blew in. You could almost see the molecules of waterlike dust floating in the air. Clouds were building around the mountain. My only thought was getting past the Boulderfield BEFORE the rain hit. The Homestretch and Upper Narrows were lined with people. Many times we had to wait our turn to pass against the flow going up. At the end of the Upper Narrows I stuffed my yucca sticks back in my pack and Brian coached me down over the Chokestone. Here too there was an out-of-control moment where Brian said, ‘Your foot is only an inch off the ground. Let go. Letting go is not a normal reaction when your feet are at 13,756 feet and the rock is as steep as a church steeple.

The end of the Boulderfield and the slow-going obstacles was a refreshing thoughtkind of like the thought of Genesis the Mexican dancer. The incoherent thought went something like this: get back to her and life would be temporarily good. Get to the end of the Boulderfield and life would be easier and less hazardous. The difference was that the Boulderfield was under my control. Whereas Genesis was somewhere in the Zona Rosa of Mexico Cityin other wordsgone. ‘Get over it. Get over the mountain. Move on. Why was she coming to mind? She had nothing to do with mountains. Maybe Longs and her represented the exoticthe noveltythe passingthe opposite of everyday routineand in a wordthe wildness my tame life lacked back in Iowa.

Whatever the hike symbolized it for sure meant that with each step down my knees took a pounding. The pounding of the knees settled into a thorough beating of my whole body in general. Coming down the Through and the lower Narrows was slow and it was easy to slip on gravel and send rocks tumbling down on the people below. A rock I accidentally sent down the mountain just missed Dave. It would‘ve ended his hike. It sped past him and continued down. I saw one guy hug a rock and close his eyes. It stopped. People waited for us to pass and get below them.

The Through, Lower Narrows, and Keyhole came as only markers to make note of en route to the long-awaited end of the Boulderfield. They held no more meaning to me than signs I was nearing the end of the hazards. Brian, Dave, and I picked our way through the boulders. Laddy somehow flew through the bouldersleaping like someone half his age. From the summit to the end of the Boulderfield was a long ways. With so many people around it was almost impossible to stop and urinate. I noticed that when we finally did stop to pee, people accepted the fact of such human necessities and turned a graceful blind eye to it.

Finally we reached the end of the rock field and I pumped some water coming out from under the field with my water purifier. Once I was finished it started to hail. From there it rained the whole rest of the way. We were off the rocks. Laddy‘s son Ryan was not. He had to cross the Boulderfield in the rain. As for the hundreds up on the summit, I couldn‘t even imagine coming down the Homestretch in the rain.

One clear idea that settled in as we hiked in the rain seeing where we had passed in the nightwas how much longer the trail seemed in the daylight. We kept looking for land markers we had established on the trail in the night to gauge how far we were from the end of the trail. The pass. The long stretch on the side of the mountain. The Chasm Lake sign. The forest. The creek. The parkinglot. Etc. All of these we looked for with much anticipation. None of them gave themselves up easily. This mountain didn‘t care to give breaks. We earned every inch of it.

In the course of this pounding on the body, Laddy and I had a meaningful conversation. He questioned the value of such trips. I had long ago dismissed such criticism by people who cannot understand why anyone would chose discomfort over luxury on a vacation. But Laddy and I had shared many such experiencesYounts Peak the previous year, twelve hour plus eco-challenge races, and marathons. He understood the value of physical challenge and even sacrifice for a goal. So I felt he earned the right to criticize such a vacation based on climbing mountains. I have always believed in this kind of workthis kind of challenge and discomfort in order to reach some insight about the world and myself. I didn‘t think such insight was possible through convenience. I‘d be the first to defend such trips in light of a society hell-bent on comfort, instant gratification, and obesity. Besides wasn‘t there a subtle pleasure in pushing myself through a fifteen mile / 4,500 feet ascent? All of this Laddy understood, yet we discussed our knees, shoulders, backs, and the point of it all. The only insight we were getting out of this climb was that our bodies were being abused.

Shouldn‘t I have felt some pride in the fact that I had once again pushed myself through pain and achieved a goal? Wasn‘t that what life was about? Now I wasn‘t so sure. The difference now would be a trip with a little luxury injected into it. A little sitting down and doing nothing. That would be a novelty. With a good job and my own home, I have less to prove now. I had subjected myself to years of such acetic travel. I‘ve done multiple six-week canoe trips traversing whole river systems. I‘ve done over month long solo hikes and solo bike tours in the east and the southwest. I have run hundreds of races including a marathon and eco-challenge races. I was used to pain like the pain Longs could provide.

It was no wonder Genesis came to mind the night before the thirteen-hour onslaught of the body. She represented pure pleasurethe most basic and simple and magical of human pleasures. Longs was as much a tease as Genesisboth a fleeting experience and a brief connection. It was foolish to think there was anything lasting with Genesis or Longs. This was not about a rigorous outdoor life. My life was back home with wife, kid, and job. Bills, car repair, mowing, etc. it was so massively real that it overwhelmed the excitement of both Genesis and Longs. Neither could jolt me from the routine back in Iowa. This was a necessary excuse to get away and breath and be outside. It usually was enough to travel this way. But there was a fundamental difference between the old travel way of life I lived ten years ago and the way I travel and live now. I used to work around my travel. Travel was the point. Work just paid the bills to get to the next place. Now I have to travel around my work. Work is the bread of life now and travel is merely a little dessert I can enjoy once or twice a year. The former life was one of limitless possibility. I could quit a job and go. Now that wasn‘t possible. I wasn‘t sure I totally missed the old life. Yet at times when faced with wide-open Rocky Mountain wildness, I felt the pain of such minutia and detail and routine about my life in Iowa and I missed the old road-going days.

As I finished the trail I thought about an essay I once read by Percy Walker. He wrote about the idea that it was all right to go on a more mainstream pathlike Longs in August. I felt too old and mature to be doing trips just to make myself different from everyone else. I thought maybe it‘d be interesting to re-look at the ordinarya Longs Peak adventure that thousands do each yearnot condescendingly from a holier than thou perspective of a former vagabond, but as one who can look at the mainstream with a unique perspective and enjoy the interplay between what was and what islike how it is pleasing to look down on the seeming reflection of the stars on the lights of plains and to walk between the two. All these thoughts were raised by Laddy saying, ‘I‘m not sure I‘m into these kind of trips anymore. I could fully appreciate what he was saying.

The next day we were on our way south and decided to drive up Pikes Peak in an air conditioned Suburban. I remembered the conversation with Laddy about enjoying a less intense West with a little more internal combustion helping to propel the body through it. We got to the toll road and realized it was ten dollars a person. Without another word, Laddy did a U-turn in the road. We turned south to climb another mountain and no one said one complaint about not getting to Pikes Peak in the car. Deep down I was a little relieved.

Comments or Questions

Chris P.

A breath of fresh air!
11/30/2010 5:20pm

Despite the sentiments of the ass that gave you 1 star, I have to say that this is without a doubt the best trip report I've seen on this site. Thank you for sharing it.

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