TR: Long's Peak- Loft ascent, Keplinger descent. 5.4.08
The crew: goldenboy, mtnbikerskierchick, don pedro, agave afish, cjw, non-mag Norm. Yeah, a little large, but what the hell.
First off, a huge shout-out for doumall's TR of last year, and Ireallyliketoski's TR from last week for all the helpful beta.
Ah, there's nothing like a 1:30am alarm clock on a Saturday night (or is that a Sunday morning?) The cops were out in full force, it being the weekend before cinco de Mayo. It would have almost been fun to get pulled over: "You been drinking?" "Yeah, coffee, and a lot of it, and that smell is polypro, not alcohol, so beat it, Mr Ocifer." MBSC and I were off the hook for running shuttle, so we went straight to the Long's Peak trailhead while the others dropped a car off at Wild Basin.
We were skinning by 3:45 or so, on one of the most heavily beaten paths of any fourteener. By treeline, the sun was starting to come out: http://i244.photobucket.com/albums/g...8/IMG_1520.jpg
http://i244.photobucket.com/albums/g...8/IMG_8765.jpg
Who the hell smiles with a lack of sleep?
http://i244.photobucket.com/albums/g...8/IMG_8759.jpg
Chasm lake is an amazing place. Diamond face:
http://i244.photobucket.com/albums/g...8/IMG_8764.jpg
Our route followed the obvious Loft couloir on the left:
http://i244.photobucket.com/albums/g...8/IMG_8763.jpg
The bootpacking up the couloir was perfect.
http://i244.photobucket.com/albums/g...8/IMG_8773.jpg
Near the top, you hit a cliffband and are confronted with a choice: right through a difficult and potentially icy step, or left onto an exposed ramp system. We chose left. MBSC:
http://i244.photobucket.com/albums/g...8/IMG_8777.jpg
MBSC and cjw:
http://i244.photobucket.com/albums/g...8/IMG_8778.jpg
Once on top of the Loft, the high plateau between Meeker and Long's, we made our way down through tedious boulders to make our way to the upper part of Keplinger's couloir on the mountain's S side. We purposefully dropped a little extra elevation below Clark's Arrow, having heard that it was easier and faster to do so. http://i244.photobucket.com/albums/g...8/IMG_1530.jpg
I actually enjoyed the scrambling in this area a lot. Mbsc:
http://i244.photobucket.com/albums/g...8/IMG_8795.jpg
Once we were off the rocks, the climb remained exposed, but we were on great snow for our traverse across the ledges and finally the homestretch. Mbsc and agave afish:
http://i244.photobucket.com/albums/g...8/IMG_8799.jpg
http://i244.photobucket.com/albums/g...8/IMG_8802.jpg
The huge summit of Long's:
http://i244.photobucket.com/albums/g...8/IMG_1541.jpg
The skiing was quite good- some powder and some corn. MBSC drops the homestretch, a few feet below the summit: http://i244.photobucket.com/albums/g...8/IMG_8830.jpg
There were a few rocky sections to slide through, but overall, coverage was pretty good.
http://i244.photobucket.com/albums/g...8/IMG_1662.jpg
don pedro:
http://i244.photobucket.com/albums/g...8/IMG_1688.jpg
http://i244.photobucket.com/albums/g...8/IMG_8960.jpg
gb:
http://i244.photobucket.com/albums/g...8/IMG_1552.jpg
http://i244.photobucket.com/albums/g...8/IMG_1781.jpg
cjw:
http://i244.photobucket.com/albums/g...8/IMG_1809.jpg
Norm:
http://i244.photobucket.com/albums/g...8/IMG_1825.jpg
aa:
http://i244.photobucket.com/albums/g...8/IMG_8981.jpg
http://i244.photobucket.com/albums/g...8/IMG_9049.jpg
mbsc:
http://i244.photobucket.com/albums/g...8/IMG_8891.jpg
Yes, the route does continue all the way above mbsc in the shot below. Keplinger's is a pretty cool route, it goes even though it doesn't look like it should or even can.
http://i244.photobucket.com/albums/g...8/IMG_8987.jpg
back to don pedro:
http://i244.photobucket.com/albums/g...8/IMG_9032.jpg
Long's S side:
http://i244.photobucket.com/albums/g...8/IMG_1887.jpg
Our ascent traversed below the cliffs from the looker's right, near the black rock band. The couloir is fairly obvious. This ptarmigan, however, is not so obvious:
http://i244.photobucket.com/albums/g...8/IMG_1882.jpg
Some guys were just getting to the base of the couloir at 3:30 :confused:, but we were happy to have their tracks to follow until we reached Sandbeach lake (Meeker right, Long's left).
http://i244.photobucket.com/albums/g...8/IMG_9060.jpg
From that point on, we put the "wild" in wild basin. There is a reason that area is well-known for being a bushwack from hell, and our experience wasn't much different. Imagine this for two hours, but with less and less snow as we descended, eventually walking through the forest until we hit the trail we wanted. http://i244.photobucket.com/albums/g...8/IMG_9062.jpg
Right around hour 13, we walked off the trail and into the parking area. Woohoo, beer-thirty, we thought. But oh, no, Long's wasn't done with us yet. Dry as the road may have been, it was still gated another couple of miles down the road. It was tough remembering all the good turns Keplinger's provided us at that point, but the truck and the beers arrived soon enough.
Long's is probably considered the preeminent climber's peak in all of CO. It has it all- Huge classic multi-pitch routes on the Diamond, great scrambling routes, ice routes, and mixed routes. Sadly for us skiers, what the park lacks in snowfall, it makes up in wind, making snow routes difficult to find in condition. The silver lining of this was that the North Face Cables route, which I wanted to ski, never filled in. That route has 800' of good skiing, whereas Keplinger's has almost 3 grand. So in the end, I feel like we lucked out and ended up having a great tour de Long's.
