THE APPROACH

A few friends from work invited me to climb Grays and Torreys with them in July of 2010 because I happened to own a water filter, and this is determined to be important. This was really only a "training climb" though, because the real objective was Longs Peak. After finishing the training climb, without filtering any water, we make plans to try for Longs and I invite my friend from college, Ali (FireOnTheMountain). I grew up in Ward, and eventually Nederland but looking back, despite my proximity I'm pretty sure I didn't know what Longs Peak was until that summer. Anyway, sufficiently motivated we embarked at some ungodly hour as a group of four. Soon Ali gapped all of us, and in my effort to keep up I gapped my work friends (but did not keep up). The two of us mostly hiked the keyhole route alone, but of course that isn't really possible. There were 50 people up there, at least. I "ran" back to the car and when I got there I called my mom. She had a goal of climbing Longs for years, and I remember saying something like "I don't think I'm going to do any more 14ers, I'm wrecked. It wasn't worth it".

The alarm goes off and we slither out into the cool morning air. In the night we heard hundreds of people getting their racks in order, and embarking for our route ahead of us. Possibly thousands. The lot is now full, and Ali says "so all these guys are climbing The Casual Route too I guess". We punch out a couple breakfast items, shoulder our packs and start up the trail. Now that I'm the local, I'm in charge of the route finding and I immediately wander past the first shortcut. When I realize, I freak out and start running backwards down the hill and Ali is bummed. Backwards is never the best way to go forwards, but I can't skip this shortcut it's the most important one. It may not seem like it, but we're actually saving time here. We walk past some hikers (they're not climbing casual - sweet!) then eventually some climbers. The climber asks if this is the trail to flying buttress. Hell yeah it is, and that means you're not climbing casual either! Maybe there's only like 50 people ahead of us on the route now. When we get to Chasm lake we can see a headlamp at the Hilton, and another already on Broadway. We catch the guy at the Hilton, and he's sorting his rack and rope out. We kind of know each other, or at least know some of the same folks and strike up a conversation. He says there's two parties in front of us for Casual, and he's planning to go at D7. Alright.

THE NORTH CHIMNEY

April 2013 sees me shivering in a bivy in Glacier Gorge for an attempt on the trough. I didn't make good on my intentions to stop with Longs. I went on to climb a bunch more 14ers, and now here I am almost three years later and I'm even trying for Longs again. There's a slight problem though. I've been in Canada for about a year now, eating fast food and sitting in a pickup truck. I'm woefully out of shape. There's also a ton of snow, and bivying sucks. To date, this is still the last time I slept in a bivy. My partner Nate and I wallow up the thing though. We get up to the narrows, and start wandering out onto the exposed face. In hindsight, maybe the exposure or weather got us. There was a sheet of hard snow blocking further passage though, and for whatever reason this felt beyond us. We turned around and wallowed home. Longs is no gimme.

"Rock!"

A mankiller comes whistling down to our right and shatters on some slabs below us. Shrapnel fires off toward the base of the North Chimney and I grip the slab tight as my heart rate ramps up. That sound is absolutely terrifying. We've opted to solo the three approach pitches to Broadway up the North Chimney. I guess it's 5.4 but I've been stressing about this part, a lot more than the actual climb itself. My friend Bill has appropriately warned me about how hazardous it can be when morons are in there chucking rocks down. He's been in there with upwards of 8 other parties, and had a rock smash him in the head one time. Terrifying stuff. As near as I can tell, we're only in here with one other party (the guy off to do D7) and we're in front. That rock came from someone on Broadway I guess. We wander up the rest more or less as smoothly as you can. Ali sneaks around to the left at one point and calls over to me that he's found the route. I make it over to him, and look up. Holy shit, that's a lot of rock. One fella is belaying and another party is up in the Pitch 3 traverse. We're third on route. I know better than to consider the possibility that I'm faster than either of the two in front of us so we relax and wait our turn. The guy belaying is super nice. The weather is great, the views unrivaled. I'm not in a hurry at all.

PITCH 1

August 2014 has me wandering up the keyhole route. I'm with my Mom and she is fulfilling a longtime dream of climbing Longs. There's hundreds of other folks up here with us, and when we summit I see storm clouds rolling in. We can't escape quickly and the thought of the trough with all these other guys running around scares me so we audible to the Loft. My mom does a circ of Longs for her 60th birthday. It probably takes us 16 hours or so, and as we hike out I feel completely worn out. I know she's more tired than I am, but she's not complaining at all. She is as tough as they come, no doubt about it.

Our turn arrives. We've waited perhaps 45 minutes. We briefly discuss the pitch layout but neither of us knows the route, or how many pitches there are save some scant details. We don't really know how to plan it. The real question was who was going to get the crux pitch. We both wanted it, so not knowing how it would shake out was as good a way of deciding things as any. I had the gear already, since that was my share of the load on the hike in, so I went first simply as a matter of practicality. The first pitch is easy. It goes at 5.4 and I wander up toward a mess of tat which characterizes all of the belays on this route. It goes quick and I yell down. Soon Ali joins me and I hand him the lion's share of our rack so he can quest into the next section.

PITCH 2

Just a week after sharing the summit with my mom Ali and I are hiking up the trail. For the first time, we wander up to Chasm Lake. Our plan is to climb Kieners. This will be my first trad climb, and for the occasion I've purchased a No. 1 cam. That's supplemented with a set of nuts and some hexes. The hexes remain unused to this day. Too proud to use climbing shoes I do the whole route in mountaineering boots. This was still early enough in my climbing career that I felt 5.4 was going to be easy since I had been able to climb way harder than that in a gym. It wasn't easy, but we managed it fine thanks to some YouTube how-to videos and practicing clove hitches the night prior. When the opportunity afforded itself, we took a look out over at the diamond. I had climbed 5.10 in the gym so I knew the diamond would be no problem just as soon as I bought some more cams. Our reactions were the same: "no fucking way. That's not possible. We suck."

Ali's pitch actually turns out to be two pitches, which is great. Any time you can avoid a belay, you should. He quested up a 5.9 crack (P2) then took a sharp left and traversed on a runnout 5.7 slab (P3). This traverse is pretty famous, and we both knew about it already. When we got to the belay our friend from before was there also, belaying for the next pitch and when he told us that was actually not entirely 5.7 if you included the 5.9 crack we both let out a sigh of relief. Ali styled the crack fine, but if it was 5.7 we were in serious trouble because it wasn't trivial.

PITCH 3

June 2015 and Ali and I are at it again. This time we opt for keyhole ridge. This is a neat 5.6 and now we have between us perhaps a half of a rack. Ali knows how to build anchors now too, and he's keen to lead some of the route. I think we rope up for two pitches, and Ali leads the second one. He protects his pitch and builds a perfectly serviceable anchor to my totally untrained eye. Both of us are likely making mistakes, but we're too dumb to know it. We romp to the summit, and back to the car. For the first time in my life, Longs wasn't cripplingly difficult.

My pitch is a fairly short 5.8 crack with some distasteful offwidth. Per my friend Bill's suggestion I have been working offwidth a bit on Grand Giraffe in Eldo, a little 5.10 with about a 15' long chunk of crack transplanted straight out of hell and onto my favorite rock. This was an excellent suggestion because when I get to this pitch I don't have any problems. Grand Giraffe is way harder. I belay at a ramp which smells like piss and sits in the shade. Water trickles down around me and on the anchor and there's ice along the slab. This is my home while Ali climbs to me, and then above me to the next belay so I settle in. I've had better belays.

PITCH 4

July 2016 and again Ali and I are wandering up our favorite hill. We may not be superstars, but at this point in my life if somebody asks me if I'm a rock climber I can look them in the eye and say yes. This year's objective is Stettner's Ledges. This is an excellent, historical 5.8 on the lower east face of Longs. Put up by the brother's Stettner in the roaring 20's it was for a time perhaps the hardest climb in America and went unrepeated for two decades. The second ascent? Well that had one of the Stettner boys on it too. I lucked into the crux pitch, the 5.8 "Hornsby Finish" which tops out just right of the famous step across boulder on Broadway. I climb it clean, but struggle. Climbing is harder up here than it is in town, I would do well to remember this fact. We finish with Kieners, which we solo casually in trail runners. Proof, perhaps of some easily measured progression. Another beauty day on Longs.

Ali takes the rack and advances the rope. He struggles off the deck and I spit beta like an idiot, since I had seen our friends pass through this rock earlier. He's doing it all wrong and then he places a goddamn blue alien. Well whatever, I can reach it from the ground so I don't have to go that way. After a long time shivering at my piss smelling belay Ali calls down that he's off. I clean the Alien right away, and when I'm signaled I start climbing... oh... this is kinda hard. Shit how did those other guys do it again? Eventually I go Ali's way and it feels desperate. Then I climb "5.8+" crack for like 6 miles. By the time I get to Ali I'm visibly worked to death. Ali may well be a better climber than me overall, but there's little doubt he's at least better at crack climbing. I could tell he had an OK time on that pitch because his pro told the tale of someone with confidence. We've now determined that the next pitch is the crux, and given my appearance he offers to take it for me. I don't answer him, and instead start sorting the gear a little. By the time I'm organized I have decided to go for it. I feel like total shit but I know I would regret it if I didn't try. Ali witnessed the party in front tramming their pack, so I pull a sling and hand it to Ali. Then I clip my pack to my harness. Somewhere up there is a squeeze which I had heard about before...

PITCH 5

2017 is the year Ali moved North (or east?) to Iowa or Idaho or something like that. We didn't climb Longs together that year, but I still managed to get up there a couple times and both with our friend Ryan Marsters. We climbed "The Notch" which is an excellent route. We also made a speedy ascent of Kieners pre-work. This route now reduced to a morning workout. Things are changing for me in the climbing arena. I've managed to finagle myself into a group of ultra bad-asses called the "Satan's Minions". The founder (Bill Wright) is at this point one of my closest friends, and I've started to see a meteoric rise in my own fitness and climbing skills no doubt due to time spent with him. Not this year, but soon I think The Diamond might actually be possible.

I start things off in a very thin "5.9+" crack that is inset into the wall. I mix in some chimney technique so that I can rest a bit. I need to rest a lot actually. I'm scared, and I don't know where I put it all, but somewhere along this crack I place nearly my entire rack of cams. Eventually I work into the squeeze and my confidence is shot. There is no pro in this thing. I think about calling down to Ali that maybe he should take this after all, but I find a small shelf to put a toe and move up about 6". This process, I repeat a dozen times. I stay clear of the open end of the chimney because my last piece of pro is very far away now and if I fall I want to have the possibility that my body wedges into the thing before I pop out. Finally I find a place to stick one of my 3's and attach my last runner to it. After a fearful eternity I emerge utterly weary to my bones. Surely that was the crux and the pitch is over, right? Nope. I look up and see a bulge, and think "yeah that's 5.10a for sure... shit". On my harness I have a 3, two 2's and the green C3. I have no more slings except the one I realize is holding my pack on my harness. Alright, one sling! I quest up and see two fixed nuts in the bulge. I clip the first one with a garbage biner I found in the North Chimney, and the second one with the last sling. I move a little higher, and strength starts to drain from me. The clock is ticking now, I can only hang out here for so long and I have to figure this out quickly. There's a decent jam for my left hand but when I jam in there and pull up my left arm starts to pump very quickly so I back off. I shove the No. 2 in this spot and feel around to the right. There's a vertical seam over there at arm's length and I grab it with my right hand. A great hold, but not an efficient one. I'm laybacking now. A bulb on my right for my right foot, and then I stem out left. Some weight off my arms. I shake my right arm out a tad, then throw both hands into the seam. I layback up a foot or two, then deadpoint to a marginal hold above. I'm losing it, the clock is winding down. I don't make any considerations for my feet at all and lunge for a jug on the upper end of my reach. I stick the hold and start pulling myself up, but I'm literally climbing like it was my first time at a climbing gym. I think my feet are actually dangling in the air. My strength is gone. I slip off the jug, let out a scream and shoot backwards into the airy abyss.

This is the year. I'm nearly ready. Ali is willing to fly out and we make plans for late summer. I spend the interim getting prepared. Bill has helped a bunch of folks get up The Casual in the past, and although I didn't want to lean on him to get up it, I was perfectly ready to take any advice he had to make sure I was ready. He has a list of routes that he recommends for any aspirant diamond climber, which I think (or otherwise interpreted) are as follows:

1. Yellow Spur
2. Handcracker Direct
3. Blind Faith
4. Grand Giraffe
5. Some Alpine climbs

Well, we climbed the shit out of Yellow Spur this season (Bill's article in Rock and Ice). I can climb that route blindfolded. I got onsite's of Handcracker and Blind Faith, but neither easily. I lack a lot of mileage with crack climbing so these routes were both hard for me. I actually cheated on Blind Faith and climbed it via a variation that avoids the namesake hand jam. Grand Giraffe... well I never did get a clean lead on that. Bill led me up it once and I promptly fell out. After he gave me some beta I somehow top rope'd my way through it. I returned later with Ryan and gave it a lead attempt. This wasn't favorable and I fell out of it perhaps 5 times.

"Some Alpine climbs" boiled down to three days over two weekends for me, with a new climbing partner and good friend Jon Oulton. Together we climbed "Better than Love" on Hallet using simul climb techniques that we had rehearsed in Eldo. We were so inspired by this success we went into Glacier Gorge and knocked out two routes in a day on Spearhead (The Barb and Sykes Sickle). Then the next day we got up, through much struggle and with significant "french free-ing" the 5.10c variation on Flying Buttress. Jon (an absolute crusher) did most of the heavy lifting on this stuff, though I met my goal of leading up to 5.10a in the alpine. Ali did what he does best: he combined free time with a willingness to suffer. His progression was every bit on pace with mine and he's climbed some stellar and altogether impressive routes all across North America. I had no doubt he could pull his share, and was perhaps only concerned he would be way better than I was.

PITCH 6 AND SUMMIT

A clean fall, thank god. By far the furthest I've ever fallen outdoors. Every time I recall the details in my head I add a foot to the length I fell. For sure I was at least 10' below the No. 2 when I stopped because I remember yelling to Ali that I needed to go that far back up the rope. Having progressed at least 5' above the 2, I fell no less than 15'. Ali didn't have really any slack in the rope, because he could see I was struggling. I just had 55m of rope out and it stretched. Now it's snowing on us. The boulder field is getting rained on, and thunder and lightning are all around us. This was a low point. I considered calling down to Ali to get him up here and finish it for me. I considered some sort of aiding, but I just didn't have any gear and we didn't really have time to mess around. Had I been able to cobble together a more cowardly solution to my problem, I would absolutely have taken it. As it was, all I could think to do was wait until my arms were no longer throbbing and try again. Poor Ali had been belaying for a really long time now. I felt bad. Anyway, it wasn't dramatic. I did exactly what I did the first time except I was a little fresher and managed to pull the moves. Belaying Ali up in the snow and storm I had every reason to want him to fly through it, but in my heart of hearts I wanted him to struggle a bit. I needed some validation. When he emerged from the chimney and called up "that was HARD!" I said "Thank god!". He made a good effort at the crux, but ultimately had to hang. It's interesting, but he may have gotten it on lead since he wouldn't have been able to screw around as much figuring out the beta. After I shouted down my sequence he cruised it. An awkward shuffle of gear and stances and eventually Ali led off the final pitch and took us home to Kieners. This was a 5.7 traverse, that I did frustratingly slowly. My fear reservoir completely depleted at this point.

On Table Ledge we organized our gear and changed shoes. We planned to crush the upper section of Kieners and get down ASAP, but then two things happened. The weather cleared up, and we realized we would be crushing nothing. We were both completely wrecked. I NEVER need to rest on a hike like this, but I did then. Ali too, and he is a cardio machine. We took a dozen steps then totally lost our breath and had to stop. It was like our first experience climbing a 14er all over again. We slowly wandered to the summit laughing about how incredibly tired we clearly were.

That was one of the best summits I've ever had, hands down.

**Our rack: Doubles from 0.3 to 3 / Single 0.1 and 0.2 / Offsets 34 and 45 / Yellow, Red and Green C3s / Nuts to No. 9 / set of RPs (unused) / Ali also insisted we bring a blue alien. Add 12 alpine draws.