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The LPP was envisioned by local legend Bill Briggs. It's a simple idea: climb Colorado's northernmost (and best!) 14er by a different route each month for a year. It's also a remarkable idea: How many mountains even have 12 unique routes? Longs has dozens, but many or most of them are on the Diamond and those are hard rock climbing - not something I'm going to do. Briggs never quite completed the LPP, but Bill Wright did it in 2008, and then repeated it in 2015 with Charlie Nuttelman. There was a nice article in the Boulder Daily Camera about their 2015 LPP.
I stumbled into the LPP sort of by accident. I climbed Keplinger's with Bill, Charlie and several of their friends in December, the final climb of their successful LPP. In early January my friend Tina wanted to attempt a rare winter Longs Peak Duathlon (cycling the round-trip to the TH from Boulder). That sounded totally miserable to me, but I agreed to meet her at the TH and do the hiking part with her. When we got back to the TH at 8PM it was already so cold that I considered trying to talk her out of cycling back down the canyon, but I held my tongue and she did it! Now I had 2 tough winter months out of the way - heck, might as well just finish off the other 10 months!
I know Longs really well, and I've notched about 80 ascents. This is key - you want to know when a route is going to be in good shape, and you want to go when conditions are good. This avoids epics, which I don't enjoy. Being mostly retired really helps. Weather can be a serious issue - especially nearly incessant wind in the winter months, and frequent snow (leading to difficult and often dangerous conditions) in spring. So, you want study the weather and be ready to go when it's good. Despite careful planning we got blown out of the Boulderfield in February, crushed by wind again while trying to rap off the Beaver (SE Longs) in March, had sloppy, dangerous snow conditions on Broadway during our first attempt at the Notch Couloir in May, and got rained out of an attempt at Mary's Ledges in September (successfully climbed the following day). Both planning and flexibility are key!
Longs Peak is one of the most frequently climbed 14ers in the state, and certainly one of the most climbed summits in Rocky Mountain National Park. 99% of all ascents are made via the standard Keyhole Route, which itself isn't easy - it's 15 miles round trip, with 5000' of elevation gain, and sustained Class 3 scrambling above 13,000'. I actually didn't ascend the Keyhole Route during my LPP, though I did all parts of it on other ascents, and descended that way a couple of times. As part of this project I did 3 routes that were new to me: Alexander's Chimney (Aug), Mary's Ledges (Sep) and Van Diver's West Wall (Oct). The latter was particularly rewarding, as it turned out to be an excellent scramble (5.2), and I was unable to find a single mention of it on the entire Internet!
Since I started in December 2015, the final climb of the Project was November 2016. I'd carefully saved the standard North Face ("Cables") route for November, figuring I could get up that in most conditions. Well, on 11/3 Kendrick & I encountered somewhat tricky conditions, with crappy sugar snow on top of the slabs, with very little ice - this time of year the NF gets NO sun at all, so the snow stays cold and doesn't consolidate very well. It made for some insecure climbing, but we managed to wriggle our way up safely. Once on the summit we were able to thaw our frozen hands and feet in delightful sunshine and NO WIND. What a great finish to an amazing year on Longs!
Or not - Kendrick has one more month to finish his own LPP, so likely I'll climb Keplinger's with him in December!
Here's the list of my 20 ascents for December 2015 - November 2016. The ascents I'm counting as part of the LPP are asterisked. Links to TRs are given where available.
This piqued my interest as I love Longs. How about a lifetime LPP, or LLPP, so you don't have to do it over the course of a year, that's what I'm doing now, so I just checked where I'm at and since 1998 here's where I stand.
Keplinger - April
Cables - May
Keyhole - June
Alexanders Chimney - July
Stettners Ledges - August
Kieners - September.
That leaves Oct, Nov, Dec, Jan, Feb, March left to do, should be able to get that done within the next 10 years.
Congrats on this excellent achievement! Great job.
I'm with Schralp, fwiw, working on my own multi-decade LPP. Most of my completions are January-June, just need to mix it up route-wise in the summer and fall. I anticipate completion in...2027!
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