It was July, 1965, and I had just moved to mountainous Colorado from flat Illinois. Just about everything I owned was in my car, and I was camping my way though the mountains, postponing the day when I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d join the CU graduate school in Boulder. This particular day I had my eye set on Mt Ida, a \u00e2\u20ac\u015312-er\u00e2\u20ac\u009d on the high ridge in Rocky Mtn National Park. It was an easy walk up to the 11,000\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 plateau behind Ida, and a short \u00e2\u20ac\u0153walk in the park\u00e2\u20ac\u009d to the summit.<\/p>\n
Someplace along the trail, I met a retired guy, Bob, who was walking back to his car. Bob asked me where I was planning to hike next, and not having any plan, I asked for suggestions. He said that he and a younger friend, Jack, were going to climb Longs Peak the next day, and I was welcome to come along. He invited me to his trailer in the neighboring town of Estes Park, where, since his retirement a few years ago, he and his wife moved up to from Phoenix every spring. They made dinner and shared it with me, while we all raved about the beauty of the Park. Afterwards, I left for the campground, with an agreement to meet Bob & Jack at dawn at the eastern trail head to Longs Peak.<\/p>\n
The sun was rising behind Twin Peaks just east of the Longs Peak trail when I drove into the shadowy parking lot. There was Bob, and a younger guy about my age (24) with a rope over his shoulder. Bob introduced me, and we checked the contents of our packs (cheese, bread, candy bars and water, mostly) and hit the trail. It was a 3,000\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 gain up to the plateau known as the Boulder Field, just north of Long\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s summit. There was some snow in the shaded areas, but not enough to slow us down, though the north face of the peak seemed to be a plastered with rime. By then the sun was up high, and it compensated for the coolness of the altitude (12,700\u00e2\u20ac\u2122). Above us, to the right of the summit, we could see the “Keyhole” formation<\/a> through which the summit trail wound.<\/p>\n After a lot of boulder hopping and scrambling along the semi-circling trail, we found ourselves on the ramps approaching the south side of the summit\u00e2\u20ac\u201d\u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Trough\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Narrows\u00e2\u20ac\u009d. This was the first place we experienced serious exposure, and it is often the bane of the flat-landers. I had climbed few mountains before, but for some reason the exposure didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t affect me. Maybe the air\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s lower oxygen content had reduced the number of my functioning brain cells to 3 or 4— as evidenced by later insane decisions. The slope drops off below the trail in long pinkish-grey slabs that disappear into Wild Basin. Apparently the exposure didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t faze Bob or Jack, who scrambled up \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Home Stretch\u00e2\u20ac\u009d to the summit, with me in their wake.<\/p>\n The top of Longs is flat, and about as big as a baseball field. If you batted a baseball from that 14,256\u00e2\u20ac\u2122-high field, it would drop 3 or 4 thousand feet in most any direction. From the pitcher\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s mound you can see all of the National Park, Colorado\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Front Range all the way down to Pike\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Peak, and the mountains of the Continental Divide to the west. It was a marvelous view, and we sat down and ate lunch while we tried to identify those peaks around us.<\/p>\n Other climbers who had just summited were also enjoying the scenery and their lunches, or were snoozing, but Jack walked over to the east side of the summit and looked down over Long\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s East Face. We trundled over to look with him, and so did some other hiker\/climbers. He pointed down towards a cleft through which we could see Chasm Lake<\/a>, a tarn in the canyon some 3,000\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 below us.<\/p>\n He casually said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153You know, I think we could descend this way to Chasm Lake. And I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve got a rope.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n (to be continued)<\/p>\n \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2\trakkity<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It was July, 1965, and I had just moved to mountainous Colorado from flat Illinois. Just about everything I owned was in my car, and I was camping my way though the mountains, postponing the day when I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d join the … Continue reading
![“Keyhole” formation<\/a> through which the summit trail wound.<\/p>\nAfter a lot of boulder hopping and scrambling along the semi-circling trail, we found ourselves on the ramps approaching the south side of the summit\u00e2\u20ac\u201d\u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Trough\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Narrows\u00e2\u20ac\u009d. This was the first place we experienced serious exposure, and it is often the bane of the flat-landers. I had climbed few mountains before, but for some reason the exposure didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t affect me. Maybe the air\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s lower oxygen content had reduced the number of my functioning brain cells to 3 or 4— as evidenced by later insane decisions. The slope drops off below the trail in long pinkish-grey slabs that disappear into Wild Basin. Apparently the exposure didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t faze Bob or Jack, who scrambled up \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Home Stretch\u00e2\u20ac\u009d to the summit, with me in their wake.<\/p>\nThe top of Longs is flat, and about as big as a baseball field. If you batted a baseball from that 14,256\u00e2\u20ac\u2122-high field, it would drop 3 or 4 thousand feet in most any direction. From the pitcher\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s mound you can see all of the National Park, Colorado\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Front Range all the way down to Pike\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Peak, and the mountains of the Continental Divide to the west. It was a marvelous view, and we sat down and ate lunch while we tried to identify those peaks around us.<\/p>\nOther climbers who had just summited were also enjoying the scenery and their lunches, or were snoozing, but Jack walked over to the east side of the summit and looked down over Long\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s East Face. We trundled over to look with him, and so did some other hiker\/climbers. He pointed down towards a cleft through which we could see Chasm Lake<\/a>, a tarn in the canyon some 3,000\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 below us.<\/p>\nHe casually said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153You know, I think we could descend this way to Chasm Lake. And I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve got a rope.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n(to be continued)<\/p>\n\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2\trakkity<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was July, 1965, and I had just moved to mountainous Colorado from flat Illinois. Just about everything I owned was in my car, and I was camping my way though the mountains, postponing the day when I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d join the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-other","category-rakkity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mainecourse.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mainecourse.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mainecourse.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mainecourse.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mainecourse.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3709"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mainecourse.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3709\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mainecourse.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mainecourse.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mainecourse.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}](\"http:\/\/www.14ers.com\/photos\/LongsPeak\/200508_Longs07a.jpg\"){kind=link}