Saturday, July 26, 2008

Long's Peak

A week after doing the race up Mt. Evans, I joined three of my cousins, Jim, Marc and Justin to hike up the 14,259 foot Long's Peak. Every afternoon at around 2pm thunderstorms roll through the mountains of Colorado. To get off the mountain early enough, we started hiking at 1am. We chatted the hours away as we trudged up the mountain, headlamps lighting the way. Once we got above the treeline we were able to look behind us and see 15 or so sets of headlights from groups that were behind us. We watched a beautiful sunrise from the boulder field as we climbed up before getting into the really tricky steep, exposed sections. The final part of the climb was super steep, exposed and down right scary. My cousin Jim who is a rock climber said that it was about as steep a slope as he would want to climb without ropes. Aside from a Nalgene that slipped out of Marc's backpack and shattered on the rocks below us, we made it to the top safely at around 9AM and were rewarded with some great views. We took our time hiking down and just as we got below treeline, the rain started so our timing was good. We got back down to to our car around 2pm for a total of 13 hours of hiking. All around it was a really fun mountain to hike and a great end to my trip with my cousins. Check out a slideshow of the trip here (if you want to see larger versions, click on the slideshow twice):

3 comments:

Unknown said...

hey Loren,

Reading about your adventures make me want to quit my job and travel across country!
cheers,
amy

Loren said...

You should! It'll be the best thing you ever do! And then come visit me in Seattle!

Unknown said...

I am not that frustrated with my job yet