This weekend my climbing partner was out of town, so I decided to do something long and solitary. I decided to try Long's Peak via a reasonably technical route. Enough to make it fun, but not too dangerous to solo. And to make it as solo as possible I decided to start on Monday.
In May we tried to climb Long's via a variation of the Clark's Arrow (Loft) route, where you get to the Loft by climbing Lamb's Slide to its top and then traversing the top of Flying Dutchman Couloir to the saddle itself. Last time we made it only to the top of Lamb's, so this time I decided to start really early. After leaving Fort Collins at midnight, I drove to Estes and ended up starting hiking at 1-35am, from a deserted parking lot. The moon went down by the time I got above the treeline, and I saw Milky Way for the first time in my life. That thing alone was worth all the trouble. And there was more to come ;-). The night was really dark, so I could discern the silhouette of the mountains just by the line between a starry blackness and a tar-like blackness. It was surprisingly warm, and even with the wind picking up I felt comfy in a thin T-shirt.
At 3-35am I got to the Chasm Lake, which was invisible. I could only see what my LED headlamp was illuminating, an oval spot several meters ahead of me. I thought that I'm gonna get in trouble finding my way to the Mills Glacier, but it was surprisingly easy. At 4-25am, when the sky started to change color, I was looking up the Lamb's Slide. After taking a little 15min break I put on my crampons, took one of my ice axes and started to kick steps up the couloir. The snow was perfect, firm but not icy, which made for a very fun climb. As I was getting higher, so was the sun, first turning Diamond red, and then orange. After getting above the Broadway I took some photos:
In May we tried to climb Long's via a variation of the Clark's Arrow (Loft) route, where you get to the Loft by climbing Lamb's Slide to its top and then traversing the top of Flying Dutchman Couloir to the saddle itself. Last time we made it only to the top of Lamb's, so this time I decided to start really early. After leaving Fort Collins at midnight, I drove to Estes and ended up starting hiking at 1-35am, from a deserted parking lot. The moon went down by the time I got above the treeline, and I saw Milky Way for the first time in my life. That thing alone was worth all the trouble. And there was more to come ;-). The night was really dark, so I could discern the silhouette of the mountains just by the line between a starry blackness and a tar-like blackness. It was surprisingly warm, and even with the wind picking up I felt comfy in a thin T-shirt.
At 3-35am I got to the Chasm Lake, which was invisible. I could only see what my LED headlamp was illuminating, an oval spot several meters ahead of me. I thought that I'm gonna get in trouble finding my way to the Mills Glacier, but it was surprisingly easy. At 4-25am, when the sky started to change color, I was looking up the Lamb's Slide. After taking a little 15min break I put on my crampons, took one of my ice axes and started to kick steps up the couloir. The snow was perfect, firm but not icy, which made for a very fun climb. As I was getting higher, so was the sun, first turning Diamond red, and then orange. After getting above the Broadway I took some photos:
That's looking down the Lamb's Slide. After 1 hour of climbing I got to the top, from where it was easy to traverse on to the Loft. Here is the top of Flying Dutchman:
Another fun and easy patch of snow that brought me to the Loft at 5-40am, with a great view of Meeker with its Flying Buttress (the prow in the center):
As it turned out, this was the easiest part of the ascent. The real fun part started higher up...To be continued.
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