Tour de Longs Peak

June 13, 2021: Early o'clock

We woke up at 1am and were hiking by 2. I was very close to calling it as I hadn't had a wink of sleep all night. Glad I didn't though! We started hiking on a trail to Chasm Lake. I figured I could always turn around at Chasm since I knew the trail well.

Chasm Lake and Beyond

By the time we made our way around Chasm Lake, we were off trail and I resolved to keep going. The prospect of going up 1800' up a steep couloir made me nervous. Lambs Slide is a long couloir, about 42-45 degrees steep that goes from Chasm Lake to the Loft, which is the saddle between Mts Meeker and Longs. As we started going up the couloir, we were treated to the usual spectacular Colorado sunrise. It was mid June at this point, so sunrise was around 4:45am.

Up Lambs Slide

It turned out that since we had a fairly large group and each person took turns at the front of the line kicking steps, that it was like climbing a staircase at slow speed. The image below is near the top portion of Lambs Slide.

The Loft to the top of the Notch

When you exit Lambs Slide into the Loft, you are in the saddle between Meeker and Longs. Meeker looks tiny since you are almost at the same elevation.

Rappel down into the Notch

We got to South Longs Peak and set up a long rappel down into the Notch. It was one of the scariest rappels I had ever done. It took a good 3 hours to get everyone down.

Keplingers 

After rappelling down, we had to go around the top of Keplingers Couloir to Homestretch. Keplingers was an awkward 60 degree side slope; definitely a no fall zone.

Summit

Looking down from the summit; the high mountains i.e. Storm peak look so tiny

Cables Route and out

To get off the mountain, instead of taking the "standard" trail i.e. the Keyhole route, we elected to go down the Cables route, a steep hike with easy rappel to get us down to the Boulderfield.