Longs Peak Attempt
Statistics
- Date - 09/03/2010
- Elevation - 13,700'
- Route - Casual Route
- Miles - 10.0
- Elevation Gain - 5,000'
- ACME Mapper - Link
- CalTopo - Link
- Partners - Eli Helmuth, Jeff Shafer
Description
Jeff, Eli, and myself headed up for some climbing and training on the Casual Route of the Diamond of Longs Peak. We started from the trailhead at 3:00 and made it to Chasm View in about 3.5 hours. We rapped off Chasm View down to Broadway only to find four other parties queued up in front of us. We hung out on Broadway for a couple of hours and finally got on the route after 10:00. Jeff led the first pitch (5.4) which felt harder to me. Eli took over the leading from here linking the short 5.9 hand crack pitch with the 5.7 traverse pitch. The next pitch below the enduro-dihedral pitch was slightly harder than the hand crack section of pitch 2 and had a squeeze chimney. The 200' dihedral pitch was sustained and challenging. I thought it was 5.9 instead of the reported 5.8. We had been waiting behind parties at each belay, so by the time we reached the crux pitch and had completed 4 out of the 6 pitches (the way we broke them up) a bottleneck had formed. The first and fourth groups of climbers of the day were extremely slow. We did the math with the amount of daylight left compared to how long we thought it would take everyone to finish the route and knew we had to bail. We rapped back down to Mills Glacier and the party in front of us was still on the crux pitch with another traverse pitch yet to climb to get to upper Kieners. We made the right call as the sun sank and we hiked out in the dark. It ended up being a 19 hour day.
Photos
Diamond
Chasm View
Casual Route
Pitch 2
Pitch 2
Pitch 2
Pitch 2
Traverse
Pitch 2
Pitch 2
Pitch 2
Pitch 2
Traverse
Pitch 3
Pitch 4
Dihedral Pitch 4
Jeff on pitch 4.
A climber on the crux pitch above.
Chasm View
Boulder Field