As I told Pete on Friday’s drive to Garden of the Gods, “I have to wake up twice today.” So I found myself trying to get 5 hours of sleep at 6pm and realizing only about half that by the 11:30pm alarm.
1:40am finds us departing from the Longs Peak trailhead for the now familiar trudge up to Chasm Junction. A few stars are out at the trailhead, but mostly clouds dominate. I notice much less snow on this trail than 2 weeks ago, but am disappointed it didn’t freeze well overnight and there’s no sign of ice on the puddles we stomp through.
Still navigating by headlamp Sarah and I reach Chasm Lake first and decide to try the northern route around the lake. We stay too close to the shore at first and I nearly avoid getting a soaking foot when the snow fails to support my weight and I find my foot in a pool of water just below my boot cuff.
Dominic and Jamie take the southern route and we all meet up on the far side about the same time. Just ahead we can see a couple headlamps working their way towards Lambs Slide and figure they must have bivied here last night. Sunrise comes as we’re climbing the snow of Lambs Slide and we catch up to the two climbers who let me take over kicking steps for the final ascent to Broadway.
Broadway is a sloping ledge that runs clear across the east face of Longs Peak and just below the Diamond. Everyone breaks out ropes and crampons at this point and I let the other two climbers (John and Jonathan) start across first. It turns out they’ve elected to belay the traverse across Broadway pitch by pitch while Sarah and I were planning to simul-climb. After suffering our chomping at their heels for two pitches, they kindly let us pass.
Unfortunately, they let us pass right at the crux of Broadway – a boulder that requires one to either crawl under or lean out around. Easy moves but with lots of air below your heels. I setup a belay on the far side and Sarah soon comes across. She did the exposed move quickly, but had left one of my cams in the rock to protect the harder down climb to the boulder. I had anticipated this and John and Johnathan were kind enough to collect my cam and return it to us.
After a couple rope lengths of simul-climbing we reached the entrance to the Notch Couloir and I collected our two pickets from Sarah and then started the long process of kicking steps. Since the snow hadn’t frozen well overnight it wasn’t well consolidated and required a few kicks to build a stable platform.
In all, I found the snow conditions to be some of the worse of this spring – worse than Savage Couloir and a far cry from Dreamweaver. In a few spots I felt I was excavating a trench and I should have brought a shovel.
At least the couloir had some amazing views down to Chasm Lake framed by the large rock cliffs on either side.
Sarah and I continued to simul-climb placing our few pickets where I couldn’t find any decent rock protection. In general I kept about one and a half pieces of protection on the shortened rope separating us.
John and Jonathan elected to avoid the crowds building in the Notch and head up Kleiner’s route. Besides Sarah and I traveling as a rope team, Dominic and Jamie were also following and another two person group was catching up. Later a three person party would also trail all of us.
The two person group passed Dominic and Jamie, but must have decided to let me continue to break trail since they settled in behind Sarah and I. Like on Dreamweaver, we’d planned to pitch out the crux pitches that Cooper’s “Snow Climbs” book said could be up to M3 (mixed rock and ice, about 5.7 in difficultly). However, we found both these spots to be predominately snow with just a little 60 degree ice and were comfortable continuing to simul-climb through the cruxes.
About 9:30am we reached the notch and finished our snow climb. The notch was windy and we settled on a ledge to make up for the lack of food and water over the last several hours. We hadn’t wanted to stop with multiple groups behind us and slow everyone down.
Sarah and I wanted to locate an easy fifth class climb that led to the summit. However, we weren’t sure how far behind Dominic and Jamie were and if they’d want to proceed up that same route or consider other options, such as descending down to the Clark’s Arrow route to bail off the Loft or up to the summit via the Homestretch. We cursed the lack of foresight that prevented us bringing radios.
While waiting we explored just east of the notch looking for the gully and the slabs leading there. I was suddenly distracted by seeing a cam sticking out of the rock. I figured the lobes were over cammed and there would be no way I could remove it. However, I took my nut tool and started working on the trigger. I found the cam was actually under cammed and assumed the person who had tried to remove it just couldn’t access the trigger since it was deep in a crack. Soon I’d acquired what looked to be a nearly new $60 piece of climbing gear!
Back to the mission, we found a good belay spot and the slabs that must lead to the rock climb. Dominic soon appeared, about a half hour behind us and they rested while I started across the slabs.
For some reason I was trying to match up a photo I’d seen of the climb and only half remembered and so I wasted a lot of time traversing around trying to look at different gullies. Instead I should have just taken the first one (which looked quite reasonable). Eventually, I came to my senses and belayed Sarah across the slabs.
The two person group started climbing out of the notch and took a slightly higher line than I had and basically cut my first two pitches into one.
I set out to follow them and arrived at their belay station just as the leader was taking off for the next pitch. The follower and I looked at each other and he commented “Don’t I know you?” and I replied “Scott?” Scott and I had first met climbing one of James Peak’s couloirs last year. It seemed strangely appropriate to run into him again on a couloir climb.
Once they’d climbed off and Sarah arrived at the belay I headed up for another pitch, but ended up stopping at about a half rope length. The climbing above looked easier (3rd and 4th class) and we’d move faster without pitching it out.
From here we followed Scott and his partner along the ridge north to the summit.
Once at the top we debated about our descent route. Scott’s team was worried about the snow conditions on the north face and so elected to descend the Homestretch to Clark’s Arrow and the Loft. We really wanted to descend the North Face, or old Cables Route (so named because the park service used to have hand cables running up the face to assist ascents) since we thought it would be faster.
Again wishing for radios, Sarah and I discussed the options while waiting for Dominic and Jamie. We quickly decided to try to the North Face route since the sky had definitely clouded up and we expected rain and worse at any minute. Thankfully, the clouds lifted just enough to allow us to see as we started down the North Face looking for the top eye bolt to rappel from.
The last couple hundred feet to the old eye bolt is steeper and in the soft snow we decided to belay the climbing. Dominic led down, then I sent Sarah and Jamie down with prussiks on the rope before following them down.
After the first rope length, a half length pitch took us to the eye bolt where we anchored in and then tied our two ropes together for the 60 meter rappel down to easier angled snow.
Once in the Boulder Field the skies finally took the expected step of producing rain and thunder. The Boulder Field and all the alpine tundra below was a wet mess of running water and soft snow over pooled water.
In many places the “trail” was more “creek” and flowing with several inches of water.
Splashing my way I rushed down until I reached treeline where I found a dry rock under a tree and waited for the others to catch up. Sometime after 5pm we finally staggered back to the trailhead for an over 15 hour day. We could hardly change into dry clothes fast enough for the long anticipated stop at Oskar Blues for dinner and beer.
