The Radical Slam: Meeker, Longs, Pagoda, Storm, Mount Lady Washington, Battle Mountain, and Estes Cone + 50 Push-ups

Laura and I left Boulder at 2 am with a plan to tackle The Grand Slam of Longs Peak clockwise starting with Meeker via The Loft. We got to the trail head at approximately 3:15 am and parked a quarter mile or so down the road. We took some time to pack our gear and make some decisions for potential cold weather layers. At 3:23 we started our watches at the car (because extra vert) walked to the toilets to take care of business, before making final adjustments to our shoes and gear before setting up trail. Our watches were just under 9 minutes in when we officially set out on our quest.

The weather was surprisingly warm through the forest and even cresting into the alpine just over two miles in past the final bridge. We meandered up trail and were pleasantly surprised by the lack of wind, a welcome contrast to last weekend. We reached Chasm Junction and headed left towards Chasm Lake enjoying the slight downhill reprieve. Soon we reached the base of The Loft and began our ascent.

Having climbed Meeker and Longs the day before, I knew there would be plenty of water but rainfall overnight made for some saturated rock in spots along the ascent. Thankfully most was avoidable and given the warm temps none were iced over. We encountered a group along the waterfall that failed to steer left and stay on route and were attempting to climb some more technical sections. A big reminder to always have a gpx route on hand, especially when route finding in the dark. Staying on route nothing should exceed class 3. Soon we reached the saddle between Longs and Meeker and made yet another left up towards the ridge before summiting Meeker just before sunrise at 6:26 am. We took our sweet time on Meeker enjoying the new day light and having the fortune of watching the sky pop off with brilliant oranges and alpenglow illuminating Longs to the Northwest. Eventually, at 6:39, we peeled ourselves off the summit and began our trek over to Longs.

When we reached the saddle we met a couple, Paige and Jordan, and discussed both teams plans for the day. They had taken Iron Gates up and were planning on rappelling off The Cables route. We shared our plans to complete The Grand Slam without realizing within a few minutes of walking away Laura and I would mutually agree that we might as well make it radical and add Battle Mountain, Estes Cone, and the obligatory 50 pushups at the trailhead. We got a bit distracted yapping away and soon realized we were descending too soon and had to use our gpx to navigate to the correct gully to Clark’s Arrow. Although we both found the downclimbing easy it was fun to see how different our movements were given our height gap (a good 4-5 inches). We even found the dang arrow and took a picture of it at 7:20 am. Thankfully conditions were optimal through the gully with dry, and mostly solid rock not exceeding class 2, which continued through our ascent up Keplinger’s Couloir.

Soon we were connecting to the base of The Homestretch of Longs Peak. Per the usual, there was plenty of company from The Keyhole Route trudging up the steep slope to the summit. The solid rock of this portion of the mountain coupled with dry conditions is always welcome, especially knowing we’d have some unstable boulders in our future with Pagoda. We summited at 8:03 am and enjoyed a snack and conversation with other hikers. By 8:15 we started our descent down The Homestretch and towards Pagoda.

Route finding toward Pagoda was fairly uneventful besides our tendency to get distracted yapping. The most challenging part was finding the gully to descend. The gpx route and cairns marking the gully were very helpful. We were surprised to see someone on the summit and were welcomed by him when we arrived around 9:30. He had come from Glacier Gorge and was just as surprised as us to have company on the mountain. We bid our farewell to our summit pal, Owen, at 9:40 and made our way back to Keyboard of the Winds and back up the gully which was much easier to find on the way back. After cresting the gully, we followed the cairns up and to the left until we were standing on the ridge and looking down class 2+ gully. Descending the gully is easier than it looks, being sure to head right as soon as we saw a good line below the cliff bands to contour the mountain towards the trough. This contour can be difficult in sections when the scree is dry, luckily for us the ground was moist and held the loose rocks and gravel together more than usual. We traversed below the trough and joined the normal trail at the ledges and reached The Keyhole at 10:56. We took a brief break along the way to dump rocks out of shoes and stuff some snacks in our faces.

We made our way through The Keyhole and stayed left to make our ascent of Storm taking in the relatively easy work as a welcome reprieve knowing MLW awaited our arrival. We stayed below the ridge on the right the majority of the ascent, contouring the mountain and gently making our way up towards the summit. Easy class 2. We summited Storm at 11:24 am and enjoyed the views for a short break before making the descent to the Boulder Field. From the summit, there’s a small “trail” to follow down but we stayed on the rocks, preferring the better footing. Eventually we made it down towards the toilets, followed the normal trail east, and found a spot to filter some water. Thankfully water is still flowing through the area and we stopped at our normal spot to filter where a couple guides were there with young clients from Missouri. Our water filtering and chatting took about ten minutes before making our ascent to MLW.

We aimed ourselves as best we could towards the center of Mount Lady Washington’s summit, knowing there are two “summits” and the summit proper is to the left. Poles were helpful for me during this time, Laura preferred to go without. Another class 2 talus hike up to the top where we summited MLW at 12:25 and enjoyed the amazing views of The Diamond and were thrilled with the building clouds in the sky providing much needed cover. We also took this opportunity to reapply sunscreen and take inventory on food and water to ensure we were prepared for Battle Mountain, the notorious bushwhack, and of course Estes Cone.

At 12:30 we hopped up and made our way down MLW’s northwest(ish) ridge and towards Battle Mountain appreciating the beautiful reds and oranges of the changing tundra as autumn creeps into the alpine. The trek down and across was fairly uneventful, class 2, and easy to navigate. We rejoined the Longs Peak Trail briefly before staying left and heading towards Battle Mountain’s summit, an easy class 1, jaunt. At 1:22 we were standing on the summit of Battle Mountain for a selfie before aiming towards the saddle ahead and mentally preparing for the bushwhack.

I actually did The Radical Slam a couple weeks back with my buddy, Trail Magic Mike, and we found a decent line down and through the thick willows and brush towards the forest. I tried my best to recreate that for Laura and I but we eventually used my previous Strava data to support our descent. Ultimately aiming for more barren areas between the willows and thick alpine bushes and trees. Even with semi-good navigation, there were some inevitable true bushwhacking moments where we had to squeeze through the brush (plan on bleeding a little haha). Once the forest began thinning out a bit we intuitively navigated our way down and a smidge to the left (while continuing to aim at Estes Cone) and were thrilled to find a true trail, the Storm Pass Trail which lead us directly to the Estes Cone Trail.

We began our ascent of Estes Cone at 2:33 in the heat of the day. Thankfully the clouds continued to provide cover without the threat of lightning. We were pleasantly surprised at how good we felt as we made our ascent. Per the usual, the trail can be pretty nebulous through sections of the mountain but we only got off trail briefly for a moment before finding the cairns above. We enjoyed the mini scramble at the top (no more than class 2 but we definitely found a little class 3 extra credit variation). We summited our final peak of the day at 3:00 and took in the views of not only Meeker, Longs, MLW, and Battle, but of Lily Mountain and Twin Sisters. By 3:05 we were back on our feet and headed down the mountain. The trail is much easier to follow on the way down.

The final three miles down to the trailhead were on a well maintained trail so we took the opportunity to run where we could. We skipped filtering more water at the stream as we had a small amount left between the two of us and were confident we could make it back without a refill. Soon we intersected the Longs trail and ran the final .5 miles to the trailhead. We arrived back to the trailhead at 4:15. Before pushups, we used the facilities, and then took turns doing sets of ten pushups to complete the final task of 50 pushups to make it an official Radical Slam.

Our total time was 12:51:57 round trip from the car back to the trailhead. We had an absolutely beautiful adventure full of laughter, fun, optimal trail conditions, and mountain weather.

My GPX won't upload but you can view and save our route on Strava here.