Hey everyone! This is my first trip report, so hopefully it turns out well.

Sydney (AlessiaAscent) and I had been discussing our summer mountain plans for a while this year. We're planning on doing a trip with all the San Juan 14ers in July, so we were thinking about strategies to climb our remaining 14ers outside of that timeframe. We'd been honing our ski mountaineering and snow climbing skills this past winter and spring, and ended up having a couple of days to spend in the mountains this past week or two.

However, over the past couple weeks, Colorado seems to have been in the process of its brief springtime, meaning plenty of rain, along with snow up high. The forecast for Longs called for a narrow window of decent weather in the morning of the day of our climb, so we tentatively planned to get out there, with the expectation of turning around due to weather. Mountain Forecast and the NWS both seemed to think that it would be somewhat cloudy overnight and in the morning, with snow and thunderstorms rolling in around noon. That meant that the plan was to start quite early.

We drove to the trailhead on the evening of 6/4 and totally missed the no camping signs when we arrived (whoops). We slept in the back of the car that night to be able to get an unpleasantly early alpine start. Here comes the first item in a series of small missteps. I had worn fleece pants for the drive up, with the intention of sleeping in them. Upon arrival at the trailhead, I realized that I had completely forgotten my waterproof snow climbing pants at home. That meant that I'd be climbing in pants that are essentially one step above pajama pants. Yippee. I least I remembered the gaiters. Still, my optimism certainly dwindled.

Our alarms went off at 1:30am. I opened the car door before pressing unlock on the keys, which led to a wonderful car alarm symphony in the middle of the night. What a nice way to start the day. After a pop tart and some banana bread, we were off, and started up the trail just before 2, with the goal of being at least below 13k by noon, and with a turnaround time of 10am. Sydney and I took a gamble by not bringing snowshoes, and it totally paid off. The trail was about 70-80% dry below tree-line, and the snowy sections were packed well enough as to not posthole (even with the less-than-ideal freeze below tree-line due to the clouds). I hate snowshoeing with a passion, so I was giddy at leaving them behind.

We walked through a significant cloud a little below 11k, and lost the trail a couple times in the fog. The GPS line came in clutch. It seems like approach miles don't really count when they occur in the dark. Above the cloud, a little below chasm junction, we spotted a headlamp in the distance. The glow of the front range cities also came into view, with a faint silhouette of the diamond to the right, under the full moon. We continued up to Granite Pass, when we began to see the first hints of what would be one of the most beautiful sunrises I've ever seen.

At around this point, we caught up to the mystery headlamp, to meet David (daway8 on the forum), who was returning to the mountain after getting turned around by conditions on the narrows on memorial day weekend. We talked about to mountains for a little while before parting ways; we'd end up running into him a couple more times throughout the day. We also saw one other headlamp, perhaps an hour behind us. At this point, the boulder field lay ahead.

The boulder field had its fair share of post-holing, but not enough to warrant dragging snowshoes up there.

Sydney and I had brought a rope with a tentative plan of rappelling the cables. We didn't expect the north face to be so filled in though, meaning that we'd have absolutely zero chance of finding the bolts. We ended up stashing the rope at the keyhole; that thing isn't light.

After some pretty tiring trail breaking through the boulder field, we took a proper break at the keyhole to fuel up, ditch the rope, and don crampons. We arrived at the keyhole around 5:45am, which was pretty good given that it was only 15 minutes after our goal time. Sydney and I aren't exactly known for punctuality on the trail. The Agnes Vaille shelter was still 100% full of snow. We saw David again briefly at the keyhole and discussed beta.

On the north face and on pretty much every slope past the keyhole, there was ample evidence of the mountain sluffing off quite a bit of the new snow. There were plenty of small wet slides and ample roller balls. Still, the overnight freeze was much better up high. There was also quite a bit of new powder, with thin (<1in) wind slabs in places. There was nothing of major concern in the snowpack, but the name of the game was still certainly to get down early.

We started across the ledges, which weren't too bad, it just took a second to find the best route through the rockier sections. Sydney had crampon issues shortly across the ledges, but she was able to resolve them. It was just a matter of slowly negotiating the terrain features.

The snow looks like a powdery, unconsolidated mess in some of these pictures, but it was actually quite tacky and nicely crampon-able. We made it across the ledges without too many issues and started up the trough. There was a fair amount of avalanche debris in the trough, but the current snow conditions seemed fine. Due to route limitations on the ledges, we entered the trough 100-200ft lower than the summer route.

The trough had some exhausting post-holing in places, but was simple enough to ascend. There should be a decent booter in place now, assuming new snow doesn't bury it too much.

Now for the main event: the narrows. The snowiness of the narrows are abundantly clear this year. We topped out on the trough to see this:

The narrows looked legit, and they were, but the snow was far more consolidated than these pictures would suggest. We made quick work of the first exposed walkway moves, and then slowed down for the snowfield traverse.

This is definitely an exposed, slow-going no fall zone. However, the snow conditions were way better than expected. The snow was supportive, nicely crampon-able, and stable. Anything less, and we would've turned around here. The snow was also even better on the way back when the boot pack became a little more packed. Still, the traverse was most certainly heads-up.

We took a quick break after rounding the arete at the end of the snowfield. I had no idea what the homestretch would look like with the snow conditions, but it ended up being a straightforward, moderate snow slope, with pretty deep new powder. It's in for skiing right now, all the way down to Keplinger's.

A few minutes later, we reached the unlikely summit, a few minutes before 9am

We left the summit around 9:15, hoping to be across the narrows before getting shrouded in fog and clouds. At the bottom of the homestretch, we ran into David again, who recounted a challenging crossing of the narrows. He said that Cameron (the mystery headlamp behind us in the morning) had made it about halfway across the narrows before turning back. David explained that, in an effort to avoids a narrows crossing on the descent, he was planning on down-climbing the cables. We wished him good luck and continued to our dreaded narrows descent. The appearance of more roller balls on the homestretch made us nervous for the warming snow on the narrows, but we were able to descend them before the warmed up in any significant way, thankfully. The return trip was significantly easier with an established boot pack.

With a sigh of relief, with began our descent down the trough, still in decent weather.

The crossing of the ledges was uneventful, except for when we heard what sounded like thunder. I turned to look west and noticed that it was not, in fact lightning, but a mountain sluffing off snow from the top of a distant cliff. It looked like a waterfall.

We collected our stuff at the keyhole and descended the boulder field in very sloppy snow conditions.

Eventually, we spotted David on the cables

We were very glad to read his condition report once we returned home, since that meant that he made it down safely. We continued through a scorching-hot boulder field, and down into the clouds. The clouds rolled in pretty fast, but thankfully weren't giving off much rain or snow, but still enough moisture to soak my hair on the hike down.

This continued to a soggy, uneventful hike down.

An extremely spicy burrito in Lyons on the drive back concluded this full-on, very memorable, very beautiful day in the mountains.