Fleetmack.com - Long's Peak Climb

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"I met the girl who works at the Doubletree front desk; she gave me her phone number. It's zero. I tried to call her from here, some other woman answered." --Mitch Hedberg

Longs Peak
07-20-2003
Elevation Gain: 5100
Trip Distance: 14 miles
Total Round-Trip Climb Time (including 15 minutes on summit): 13.3 hours
4WD Required: no
Exhaustion Factor (on scale of 1-10): 9
Scenery Factor (on scale of 1-10): 8

On July 20, 2003, Ryan Peterson and I climbed up Long's Peak, just 10 miles east of Estes Park, Colorado. It is the only 14er (14,000 foot mountain) in the Rocky Mountain National Forest and is the 15th tallest peak in Colorado. This was the first 14er for both of us and we didn't know how difficult of a mountain we picked for our first one. I was scared shitless, but I can't say the same for Ryan. This mountain is very very very difficult for novices like myself and has several areas where a slip of a foot could cost you your life. We had great weather for our ascent, and summitted at 9:30, however, storms came shortly after we passed through the keyhole on our descent and we were forced to rush it from there on out.

This is not a hike, this is a climb. At the summit I spoke with one man who has climbed 40 of Colorado's 54 14ers and he said Long's was "by far the hardest he's done". Now I don't know what he's all done, but I do know that I spoke with someone who has done several very difficult climbs in Colorado (Pyramid and both Maroons) and said that Long's definatley ranks in his top 5 most difficult. So for our first 14er, we were each very proud to have made it.

Here are the pictures from this trip