Here's another obscure, random, but REALLY GOOD project that Longs Peak aficionados may enjoy (I myself am kind of obsessed with this peak). Buzz's idea was to climb 10 routes on Longs in a day. Why 10? Because it's a nice, round number, and because, well, that seemed like plenty! There are so many terrific routes on this mountain, but they all have long approaches from the trailhead. Why not do the approach once, and climb many by linking them together? So, that's what we wanted to do. Here's the link-up we selected:
1- UP Keiners: Buzz really didn't want to add an ax and crampons to our already heavy packs, so we climbed Granite Ridge. Which was terrible - just nasty gravel covered slabs. We had to climb a bit above Broadway to cross Lambs above the snow, and climbing back down to Broadway was also loose and terrible. I've climbed Keiners probably 15 times over the years, but never did Granite Ridge. Now I know why. Lambs is a super fun, moderate snow climb & would have been easy and enjoyable with gear. Anyway, the rest of Keiners was great, as always!
2- DOWN North Face / Cables
3- UP Mary's Ledges: This is a nice 5.6 route on the North Face, about halfway between the Cables and Keyhole Ridge. I'd climbed this once before with Kendrick during the Longs Peak Project 2 years ago, but Buzz had never even heard of it. I wasn't confident about soloing this, so we brought a 30m rope and a few pieces. Buzz led the hard part in 2 short pitches, then we coiled the rope and scrambled to the top of the ridge.
4- DOWN Northwest Couloir: We dropped our climbing gear on the ridge and scampered down the 4th class gully, which comes out near the low point on the Ledges section of the Keyhole Route. From there it was a short hike through the False Keyhole to the bottom of Keyhole Ridge.
5- UP Keyhole Ridge: I love this route. The rock and position are amazing.
6- DOWN VanDiver's West Wall: This is an amazing 5.2 route on the West Face of Longs, which I discovered in Rossiter's book when looking for routes for the Longs Peak Project 2 years ago. I'd climbed up it in the LPP with Justin Simoni, but never downclimbed it, and Buzz had never climbed it. In fact, other than Brad VanDiver, I've never heard of anyone else climbing it. We dropped our packs at the top and eased our way carefully down. Going down it seemed more like 5.4, but downclimbing is like that.
7- UP Southwest Ridge: This is another fantastic route that climbs straight up the ridge above the top of the Trough. It has one short 5.6 section, but the whole thing is on the best rock ever - super solid and fun scrambling!
8- DOWN Stepladder: This is a short route into the Notch. At 5.5 it was the hardest downclimb of the day, but we'd done this many times so were confident about it.
9- UP Skyscraper: Well, we intended to go up Skyscraper, but weren't sure where it was. I think we ended up on a direct finish of Clark's Arrow route, off the the right (south) of the Homestretch. Good enough.
10- DOWN Keyhole Route: With the fabulous weather, this route had been super busy all day. But by the time we left the summit there were few left on the mountain.
Stats for the day are 15 miles with 7300' vertical feet of climbing in 12h30m. We agreed that Buzz's idea was brilliant (as usual): Longs has some of the best alpine rock in the state (maybe in the entire Rockies?), and an abundance of excellent scrambling routes. On the drive home we pondered on how we might make it a dozen next time!
