LONGS PEAK
14,255 ft.
August 12, 1979
By Tim Briese
(Note: For another trip report on a more recent climb I have done of Longs Peak, see the More Climbs page.)
One day while I was attending the University of Nebraska, a math professor named Jim Lewis walked into class and announced that he had climbed Longs Peak in Colorado over the weekend. There was a gleam in his eye that told me he had encountered something special on that challenging adventure, and I was intrigued. I knew that I wanted to climb it, too.
A couple of years later I asked my good friend Gale, who lived in Oklahoma, if he would like to join me on a climb of Longs. Gale was my partner in adventure, for he and I had been on trips together to both coasts and had backpacked to the Rainbow Bridge in Utah earlier that year. After expressing some initial reservation that we might be biting off more than we could chew, he quickly agreed, and the trip was planned.
On a sunny morning a few weeks later I rendezvoused with Gale at a truckstop in Salina, Kansas, and we headed west to Colorado. He brought two friends along, Brian and Duane, who wanted to join the expedition. No one in the group had ever climbed a mountain before, but we were all eager to give it a try.
That evening we arrived in the Estes Park area and found a campsite in a National Forest campground near the Longs Peak Trailhead. Here we met Carl, another acquaintance of Gale’s, who had driven up from Colorado Springs in his Datsun 280Z that afternoon. While four of us retired to our tent on that rainy evening, Carl slept in the driver’s seat of his Datsun. I wondered how well rested he would be for the grueling hike in the morning. As we lay in the tent we discussed the fact that Colorado has dozens of mountains just over fourteen thousand feet high, but none that are higher. We wondered if some limiting geological factor had established an elevation ceiling for these mountains, believing it unlikely that this clustering of similar elevations is coincidental.
We arose at dawn and headed up the damp trail under a cloudy, gray sky. I was wearing a pair of tennis shoes, being unfamiliar with the benefits of hiking boots. I had obtained a map from a bookstore back in Nebraska to find our way up the mountain. If there were any good mountain climbing guidebooks available at that time, I was unaware of them. We quickly found ourselves amidst the company of numerous other climbers as we headed up the trail toward timberline. A few hours later we climbed into the clouds and encountered dense fog as we picked our way across the Boulderfield. Even though visibility was poor, the trail was easy to find since we merely followed the rock cairns marking the way and the throngs of other hikers. It was quite chilly, especially to us who were used to the heat of a Midwestern summer, but we simply donned our coats and hiked on.
After crossing the Boulderfield we reached the Keyhole, which was quite a grand and eerie sight in the fog, probably the most memorable feature of the entire climb. Beyond the Keyhole we scrambled along rock ledges on a route that was now marked with red and yellow bullseyes painted on the rocks here and there. Then we scrambled up the grueling Trough, before skirting along the Narrows. Someone asked me later if the exposure bothered us anywhere along the route, but we were hardly even aware of any exposure because of the dense fog.
Brian was becoming ill and was starting to lag behind. He appeared to be in a sort of daze, perhaps from altitude sickness or dehydration. Not knowing any better, we encouraged him on, when the safer course of action would probably have been to accompany him down. We were all novices at this, and knew relatively little about hydration and the effects of altitude on the body.
We forged on up the Homestretch and stepped atop the broad summit early in the afternoon. There was a crowd of about thirty other exuberant climbers on top milling about in a party-like atmosphere. The summit was socked in by the clouds so views were very limited. Brian walked about like a zombie in a state of incoherence.
We soon left the top and began the long hike down. Light rain began to fall soon after we crossed the Boulderfield, so we stopped to put on our ponchos and then tramped on down the wet trail. Fortunately we were never threatened by lightning. We were nearing exhaustion as we silently hiked down the final miles through the woods and reached the trailhead late in the afternoon, completing the arduous fifteen mile hike.
That evening we were famished and treated ourselves to a delicious steak dinner in Estes Park. I could hardly remember a time when I was more hungry. I could hardly remember a time when I was more tired, either, as I immediately fell asleep in the tent after dinner and slept very soundly all through the night.
