Longs Peak

Rocky Mountain National Park

August 1996

After my trip to Rocky Mountain National Park in September 1995 to hike a few smaller mountains, my brother-in-law Jim and 12 year old niece Jennifer quickly signed on for my trip to climb Longs Peak in 1996. I secured a permit for Longs Peak for early August when the weather would be best for our summit attempt.

This was our first time heading into the backcountry and we made several very serious mistakes that fortunately didn’t cause too much trouble. I thought we could boil water at our base camp and when we arrived for our first night in desperate need for safe drinking water, my stove was unable to bring the water to the necessary temperature for a boil. Fortunately, we were able to borrow filters from other hikers. Jim hiked in jeans which can be a deadly mistake if they get wet and it’s windy and/or cold.

My favorite non-climbing or summit memory- Jim had a garbage bag full of Jennifer's gear hanging from his backpack to help lighten her load. Later that evening after setting up our campsite, I heard Jim say to Jennifer, “are you crazy”? This was in response to seeing her holding a stuffed bear. “You carried that all the way up the mountain”?

Jennifer answered, “no, you carried it for me”. What little oxygen I had in my body quickly left as I couldn’t stop laughing.

Trailhead

Jennifer and Jim at basecamp. Longs Peak Summit in the background.

Our second day on our climb was summit day. The day started with climbing over and around car sized boulders piled high below a notch in the mountain called the Keyhole. Once we climbed through the notch, we had to climb along the narrows. As the name implies, the route was extremely narrow with little room for error as a fall here would be fatal when you came to a stop several thousand feet below. The narrows was followed by a climb up the trough where we had to dodge a falling bolder the size of a small car.