Attempting Longs Peak: A Birthday I Won’t Soon Forget

Kiener's Route on Longs Peak in red; Green dot is our perch: picture courtesy of Summit Post

September 2nd, 2010: It was getting late.  Our progress up Kiener’s Route on Longs Peak, in Rocky Mountain National Park, had been hampered much of the day by difficult climbing and my inexperience.  Hours earlier when we were exiting Lamb’s Slide, a steep icy couloir that we climbed for about 1000 feet, Jeremy sensed that we weren’t going to make it, and he had started looking for a repelling station that he was sure had to be somewhere up there.  Back then, I was confident that we still had a chance, confidence that I presented to hide my fear of repelling off a 1000-foot cliff.  We needed a lot of luck, but if we found the route, we could make quick work of the last part of the climb and get at least partway down before nightfall.  But progress was slow across Broadway, crossing the Notch Couloir was fraught, and we had been unable to find the 5.4 route that was in the guide book.  We weren’t going to make it.  The sun was setting, it had been cold all day and was only going to get colder, we needed to find a spot to hunker down for the night. 

We looked down and saw a ledge about 50 feet below us.  It was flat and maybe 6 feet wide and 15 feet long.  We repelled down.  Once we reached the ledge, we could see the route.  We were finally on it.  The climbing above us looked positively like something I could manage; we might even be able to ascend it without ropes. But it was too late.  I added my raincoat and rain pants to my paper-thin fleece jacket and hat.  I had one warm glove, a liner with a shell.  I separated them.  One hand got the liner, the other, the shell.  It was my birthday and as we settled in, I wasn’t sure I would see another.  Jeremy set up 2 anchors and we leashed ourselves to the cliff face behind us.  He flaked the rope onto the ground so that we didn’t have to sit on the cold rock. 

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The guide book presented the route as straightforward.  I mean, trail runners have put down Fastest Known Times of 4.5 hours starting at Longs Peak Campground where our journey had begun, heading up Kiener’s Route then down the belay station on the north face of Longs and back to the campground.  They do it with a minimum of gear: ice axes and micro-spikes for Lamb’s Slide, and a rope for the repel.  Part of our difficulties were due to the conditions. Black ice on Lamb’s Slide and in the Notch Couloir were due to the lateness of the season; trail runners likely know not to go this late in the year.  Another part of our difficulties stemmed from my visceral fear of this vertical world.

I am an experienced skier, trail runner and backpacker. Jeremy, is an experienced backpacker and climber.  We had completed many backpacking trips together, including the 4-Passes loop around the Maroon Bells, which we had just finished the day before.  I did indoor technical climbing.  I enjoyed the sport: it was fast moving, a good workout and it had a social element.  I really enjoyed the social element.  Hanging with my buddies after work was a lot of fun.  I never considered myself to be a real climber.  I was more the equivalent of a social smoker or drinker, but a climber instead. 

The trouble started on Lamb’s Slide.  We had gotten a 2 am start on a beautiful windless moonlit night.  We made great progress from Longs Peak Campground to the tree line. It was so bright, that we were even able to hike some stretches without our headlamps on. Above treeline, we made our way to Chasm Lake at the base of Lamb’s Slide.  Three of us had started up that morning, but our third member, Henry, was feeling the effects of altitude and decided to call it at Chasm.  Jeremy and I headed around the lake; it was still early morning as we started moving up the couloir.  We moved well until about halfway up when the snow faded from the couloir and all that remained was black ice.  Jeremy was using the French technique, trying to grip the ice with the bottom of his crampons.  I was front pointing.  At one point he didn’t slam his foot down hard enough to sink his crampon into the ice and slipped.  Luckily, I was right below him and caught him.  No damage was done to him or me, but this was getting dangerous, it was time to pull out the ropes.  Our fast progress slowed dramatically, and I found myself out of my element.  Jeremy built an anchor and led a pitch up to where we exited Lamb’s Slide. My skills were limited to taking apart the anchors and following top roped. 

Belaying Jeremy as he climbed the pitch, I discovered that I was under dressed.  It was September 2nd, my birthday, and late enough in the year that the sun no longer shone on the northeast face of Longs where I was standing.  The walls high above me kept me in the shade, and I stood there shivering.  I had my typical day hiking gear on which was fine for moving non-stop on a sunny day, but completely inadequate for being on-belay in deep shade. 

Finishing Lamb’s Slide was slow, but Broadway Ledges would sink us.  I could see Jeremy above me all the way up Lamb’s Slide.  I insisted that we rope up for Broadway as I found that my sense that I had a “vertical attitude” applied to steep ski and trail running terrain, but not to 1,000-foot cliffs.  This was a world I was not comfortable in.  Jeremy set an anchor, set off and quickly disappeared.  I stood on-belay shivering for a long time; Jeremy stood on the other end, wondering where the hell I was.  We hadn’t realized that we needed a signal, say, he pulls on the rope to let me know he's ready for me.  With all Jeremy’s experience, all his climbs had been straight up where the lead climber was always in view.  So, we both stood probably no more than 150 feet apart, me screaming “Off belay?” while Jeremy screamed “Off belay!” neither hearing the other, neither of us moving.  Finally, my full body shivers overcame my fear, and I set off.  But more time had been wasted.  Our progress had been belayed. 

Crossing the Notch Couloir presented the next problem.  It wasn’t steep, but it too was sheet ice.  As a general rule, slipping on ice can be painful, but slipping on ice that flows over a 1,000-foot cliff presented a slip as pain-of-death problem.  I looked over at Jeremy.  “Let’s rope up.”  Our progress now took a nosedive off the cliff I so feared.

Once across the couloir we finally reached the technical rock climbing.  Summit Post rated it at 5.4, which even I was confident that I could climb.  Problem was, we couldn’t find the route.  Jeremy pulled out his guide book.  We read it, we peered at the wall. I proposed, "Maybe we'll see it if we look at it sideways or cross-eyed." Nothing helped.  We didn’t see anything that looked remotely like it was 5.4.  “Sure would help if there was colored tape on the routes like there is indoors,” I added helpfully.  We could see a route out of the Notch, but the climbing was going to be more challenging, slower and harder than expected.  At this point we were stuck.  There were only 2 exits we were aware of: back down Lamb’s Slide, which both of us voted against, or finish the climb. We started up. 

We completed three pitches, none of the climbing was easy for me, and Jeremy, who had been on the sharp end of the rope all day was tiring.  Then there was the rope; climbing, I was learning, required constantly tending the rope.  The rope would get stuck around a rock, get tangled, or need to be flaked or coiled. As Jeremy said more than once, "It's the rope's job to get tangled, it's our job to untangle it."  It kept us busy.  I was learning quickly, but time was not on our side.   What’s more, the rock was freezing cold.  I put gloves on which made the climbing more challenging still.  On our last pitch, which Jeremy rated 5.9, I had to remove a glove to clear the rope from a knob of rock it had tangled itself around and dropped it.  It instantly disappeared into a crack.  Hopefully it made a great winter home for a pica, because it was gone to me. 

The next pitch looked steep.  We weren’t in a good spot; it was getting late and the chill was deepening.  We agreed, it was time to look for a place to hunker down for the night.  We looked down and saw the ledge that was to be our home for the evening about 50 feet below us.  We repelled down.  Once we reached the ledge, we could see the route.  This was the route.  The climbing above us looked like it was my speed, even without colored tape; we might even be able to ascend it without ropes. But it was too late.  I added my raincoat and rain pants to my paper-thin fleece jacket and hat.  I had one warm glove, a liner with a shell.  I separated them.  One hand got the liner, the other, the shell.  Jeremy set up 2 anchors and we leashed ourselves to the cliff face behind us.  He flaked the rope onto the ground so that we didn’t have to sit on the cold rock.  Light began to fade.

Jeremy didn’t have his phone with him.  I tried to get a signal on mine.  We were at about 13,400 feet, generally above cell phone service areas and far enough from any cell towers that the chance of connecting a call to the outside world was slim.  If we could get through, who do we call?  Henry was the obvious candidate; he was waiting for us at Longs Peak Campground.  Even without a call he had likely already notified the rangers that we were late.  If we do get through to someone, what do we tell them, what do we ask for?  A helicopter ride out would be great.  We thought that if we could get a ride out before dark, we wouldn’t have to suffer through a long cold night.  We tried Henry, no connection.  I couldn’t call Terry, telling her we were stuck up here would freak her out.  I’ll call Huk, my buddy of many adventures.  It rang.  The call broke up but I managed to let him know that we were stuck on Kiener’s Route on Longs Peak in Rocky Mountain National Park. Please contact the rangers.  Ask them to give us a lift out of here.

Jeremy passed me a chunk of chocolate he had been saving.  “Happy Birthday.” 

“Thanks Dude.” 

We played 20 questions to pass the time.  Jeremy was much better at it than me.  I struggled to figure out an efficient sequence of questions to narrow down the possibilities quickly.  Jeremy was able to riddle an answer in 7 or 8 guesses; he even got distributor cap.  "How the fuck did you get that. You're not even a car guy."  It took me 19-20 guesses to riddle out much simpler things; yes I even struggled to get rock.

Darkness settled in.  There would be no ride out. 

It was cold.  We tried to keep the conversation going to stay awake lest we become hypothermic as we slept, but I was fading fast.  With our 2 am start, it had been a long day, and I simply couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer.  We settled down to sleep sitting on the coiled rope.  Jeremy had warmer gear than me, so he sat in front, and I kept my backpack on to protect my back from the cold rock.  Sleep didn’t last long.  We woke up shivering.  We got up, started jogging in place.  We jogged for a long time.  When we were finally warm enough, we sat back down and quickly dozed off, only to be awakened about 15 minutes later shivering once again.  We got up and start jogging again.  It went like this hour-after-hour, all night long: 30-40 minutes of jogging in place, our tethers flapping behind us; 15 minutes of sleep followed by shivers that forced us back up. It was a very long night.

It was a harsh night in the sense of the cold and our lack of rest, but the night was beautiful and windless.  The milky way shone brightly above us until the moon rose, then we were bathed in moonlight.  Early in the night, fog flowed up from the valley, across the treeless plain at the base of Longs and moved up as far as the top of Lamb’s Slide. It was a stunning show and thankfully it retreated instead of engulfing us.  We couldn’t have asked for a better night to be benighted at altitude.  We were able to keep ourselves from getting hypothermia, we didn’t freeze to death.

Our high perch faced east.  We could see well beyond the mountains out to the flatlands heading toward Kansas.  First light came early, and with it the promise of a warm new day.  First light, though, was just a tease.  We still had hours till the sun rose, hours till we could stop running and settle down for an hour or two of sleep.  The sun finally shone on us at round 6:30 during one last spate of running.  Once we started feeling it’s warmth we laid down for a solid hour of sleep.

We sat up from our nap and took stock of our situation.  We were almost out of water, and we were exhausted.  We wanted to head down, but Lamb’s Slide was the only exit we were aware of that didn’t having us first climbing the peak.  We decided to try and call the rangers and ask for help getting out. 

The rangers had a hut down near Chasm Lake in a place that gave them a good view of our perch.  They could see us through a scope mounted on their porch.  They asked us to make our way back down to the Notch Couloir and across Broadway.  Two rangers, Mike and Will, would meet us there.

We got ourselves moving, repelled down to the Notch Couloir and made our way back across Broadway.  We were both dehydrated, tired and feeling a little meek from our failure to finish the climb and our need to call for help.

We watched as Mike and Will made their way up the black ice section of Lamb’s Slide, roped up, crampons, two ice axes each.  “Wow you guys climbed that yesterday, that was dangerous.” 

They were positive and engaging, and they didn’t make us feel like we had no business being out here.  They brought two quarts of water for each of us, insisted that we drink a quart each before we headed out.  We guzzled, we apologized, we roped up with one ranger leading each of us and got moving.  We would work our way across the top of Lamb’s Slide through a notch in the rocks rimming the top of the slope.  It was a semi-technical climb, but they insisted that we stay roped up for the whole thing.  We had to put the crampons on one last time to climb one last section of black ice at the top of Lamb’s Slide.  Once we got through the notch, we quickly came to a trail take would lead us down to their hut.  We packed up the ropes, harnesses and crampons and started hiking.

A group of Mike and Will’s fellow rangers hiked up to meet us.  We feared they came to check out the tourists who got in over their heads.  But they were great, and they treated us like fellow climbers.  As we descended and the walls rose around us, they pointed out their many first ascents among the cliffs.  They were impressive athletes. 

When we got to the hut, they handed each of us a massive hoagie.  We nearly swallowed them whole.  They took our blood-oxygen levels expecting us to be hypoxic.  Many of the climbers they rescued had headaches, coughs and showed signs of confusion.  But our levels were normal.  It seems that hiking the four 12,000-foot passes around the Maroon Bells helped save our asses.

It had now been 2 long days.  The rangers could see we were crashing.  They pointed us to the loft.  There were 2 of the thickest down sleeping bags I had ever seen up there.  I took one, Jeremy took the other.  We slept soundly until morning.

We ran into Henry at tree line the next day as he was making his way up to meet us.  We were well rested, glad to see him, glad our adventure was coming to an end.

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One thing that got forgotten now that our adventure was over, was for me to call Huk back. The poor guy didn't know what happened to us until he called me some days later. "So you're not dead. Asshole, you could have called me back." I deserved that.