July 29 - August 3, 2004
SATURDAY, JULY 31:
We were up just after the sun on Saturday morning, ready to pack up camp and drive the few miles down the road to the Longs Peak trailhead. There are three backcountry campsites along the 7.5 mile trail to the summit of Longs Peak. You pass Goblins Forest first, little more than a mile along and still well below treeline. The Boulderfield is the third site, only 1.5 miles from the summit but above treeline, very exposed, rather uncomfortable (being, obviously, a field of boulders) and with basically no protection from wind or storms. Between those two, however, is the Battle Mountain campsite. It's right at treeline and so there is some protection from wind and rain, and is 2.5 miles in at 11,000 feet. The catch is that there is only one site at Battle Mountain, and it's a group site -- you need 8-12 people in your party to camp there. Perfect for our happy group of 8! (Oh, and it had a privy. Bonus points.)
After a couple quick stops in Estes Park (a warm jacket for Rich, a bit of food for others), we arrived at the Longs Peak trailhead around 10:30 a.m. There were cars everywhere. The parking lot probably held 40-50 cars, but there were at least twice that many in the area, and the extras spilled all down the road. I now understood why they emphasized that you should arrive early if going up to the summit, but since we only had 2.5 miles to hike that day and weren't crunched for time, I wasn't worried. We unloaded all eight packs in the parking lot, Becca and Emily started up the trail, and the rest of the group sat with the remaining packs while Rich and I headed back down the road to park the cars. After the hike back up to the parking lot (bragging rights for Rich and me for the rest of the day, since we hiked a bit extra -- ha!), we hit the trail. A nearby sign listed our starting elevation at 9,405 feet.
L to R: sign at the trailhead noting that the Keyhole route (which we followed) was still rated "technical"; Gavin with his pack along the trail on our way to the campsite; first good look at Longs Peak; Carter, Jason, Rich & Gavin pose for the "man picture" near our campsite, with Twin Sisters in the background
I could feel the thin air almost as soon as we began hiking. I had felt fine the day before on our trip to Sky Pond, but my heavy pack made for tougher hiking. (Go figure.) I think it weighed right around 40 pounds once I'd included food and water. Stupid, annoying, dense, heavy, but yummy water. As we hiked, our group naturally split into pairs. Becca and Emily were in front at first since they'd started earlier. Carter and Gavin were hiking up the trail within sight of Jason and me, who were a bit slower and were taking fairly regular 30-second breaks to catch our breath. Rich and Jen rounded out the group a couple minutes behind us. I had never been higher than 9,000 feet before, and the weight of the packs combined with the elevation really took its toll. I began creating little goals for myself to take my mind off everything else. I'd count 200 or 300 steps, then stop for 30 seconds. 200 or 300 more, and stop again. The whole thin air experience was totally new to me. My legs felt fine and except for a couple hot spots on my feet I wasn't in any pain. Each time I paused, my breathing slowed back to normal within 30 seconds or so. But as soon as I began to walk again, I just felt like I was having to work so much harder than normal to move uphill!
We caught up and passed Becca and Emily and around 12:30 (probably 1.3 miles up the trail), Gavin, Carter, Jason and I stopped for lunch. We picked a nice log next to a small creek that was in the shade and enjoyed our food while trying to avoid getting bitten by the millions of mosquitos. This would become a theme for the rest of the weekend -- eating with one hand while swatting mosquitos with the other. The nasty buggers were really in fine form. Deep Woods Off, however, is a wonderful thing, and I escaped the entire weekend with only a handful of bites. Or maybe I just don't taste as good to the mountain mosquitos. After eating, we continued on up the trail. I was actually happy to get going again, as I was getting chilly in the shade.
L to R: Carter, Rich & Jen crossing the bridge over Alpine Brook (our water source); Emily gets comfortable in a nearby tree; Jason inexplicably brought along a potentially useful but rather heavy Army Survival Guide; the group preparing dinner on Saturday night
We emerged above the treeline about 2 miles in and could finally see Longs Peak for the first time since starting on the trail. Ironically, you can't actually see the peak from the trailhead despite it being the tallest thing in the entire national park. Just before 2:00 we arrived at a junction in the trail. Going left took you onward toward Longs, while going right took you a short 0.3 miles to Battle Mountain campsite, our home for the next two nights. We crossed Alpine Brook, our lovely cold water source, and reentered the trees to find our campsite. There were just enough good flat spots for our 5 small tents, and since the sky was beginning to get cloudy yet again, Jason, Gavin and I quickly set up our tents. Rich and Jen arrived as we were finishing. Becca and Emily arrived around 2:45, just as we were heading back to the creek to refill all the water bottles. With three good-quality water purifiers among us, filling the dozen bottles was a breeze.
L to R: Rich in his pink poncho; our campsite (Jason and Becca/Emily's tents in the foreground, mine/Carter's in the background); me in the tent during the afternoon rain; sunset on Twin Sisters; panorama of Twin Sisters before sunset
It did rain, but only for an hour or so. By 6:00 the sun was back out and all of us except Becca and Emily walked back to the trail junction by the creek to enjoy the view from the meadow. We were like some strange kind of human trolls sitting there -- there was an intermittent stream of people coming back down the trail, but we didn't let anyone pass without giving us a brief report on whether they'd summitted Longs and if so, what the conditions had been! One guy sat down with us for a while to rest, and we found out that he is a saxophone player for Luis Miguel, a Latin musician. (After more internet research, his name is Jeff Nathanson. Neat. Gotta love the internet.) He said it was his third time up the peak, and first time to make it to the summit. Another hiker said the hike had been no problem, while yet another man told us that of the six times he'd climbed the mountain, that day had been the toughest! At the end of the day, we were right back where we'd started -- we'd just climb as high as we could and see what happened!
Feeling optimistic about our chances for the next day, we returned to camp, ate dinner, had some fun hoisting bear bags into the trees, and caught the sunset. There was a small cliff a few hundred feet behind our campsite that gave us a great view of the creek below and Twin Sisters in the distance.
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