Longs North Face 6-6-2013

It was almost summer again, and time to start getting high again. I once again signed up for the Rocky Mountain Slam, and the HardRock 100 was coming up next month, so I seriously needed some time at altitude to get my blood properly thickened up. I decided to head up Longs and see how high I could get. I didn’t plan to do anything gnarly if I encountered too much snow, and was only wearing my Altra Zero Drop Lone Peak 1.5’s and no traction aids.

The trail was completely clear until I was near treeline, and wasn’t too bad even there.

Soon I was above treeline and enjoying the views.

There was a bit of snow in the trees at Jim’s Grove, but I was able to avoid nearly all of it. I continued on up through Granite Pass, and headed toward the Boulderfield.

Soon I was in the Boulderfield and encountering snow again, though it never did get very deep. I was still making good time, and I started thinking about trying to go up the North Face (Cables Route). It looked like the snow probably could take me past most of the technical obstacles, and I decided to give it a go.

I made it to Chasm View, and the start of the technical section. The snow was in great condition, and I was able to kick steps in easily and felt fairly secure. The bottom eyebolt was completely covered with snow and I simply climbed right past it. Soon I was at the bottom of the last technical stretch, and was a little concerned as it was pretty choked with very icy hard snow.

I was finally able to perch on the small rock at the bottom right corner of the picture, and followed the right crack up to the rocky ledge right below the large band of snow. From there, I crossed over to the left and was able to get on solid rock and was quickly above all of the technical climbing. From there, I pretty much climbed straight up to the top of Keyhole Ridge through mixed rock, ice and snow, and quickly summitted.

My day was only half over though. There was no way I was going to down climb the Cables Route, so my only feasible option was to go down the Homestretch and out the Keyhole route. There was much more snow than I anticipated on the Homestretch, and I soon found out it was quite a bit firmer than the snow I had just climbed up too.

No choice though, so I pretty much sat on my butt, and very carefully kicked in each step, making sure I had my fingers jammed into the snow each time I lifted a foot in case my foothold broke loose. The runout on this slope leaves a lot to be desired – basically to slide here is an automatic death sentence, so I was taking each step very carefully and deliberately. It was slow going, and since I was wearing shorts and short socks, soon the back of my calves were getting bloodied from breaking through the crust each time I kicked in a step. It took me about 20 minutes to make my way to the bottom of the Homestretch and relative safety.

Next came the Narrows. There was quite a bit of snow and ice there, but previous traffic left some very nice firm footprints for me to follow. It took only about 5 minutes to make it across.

The snow actually made it easier to get down past the chock stone at the top of the Trough, and there were pretty good footprints here as well. I made it to the bottom of the Trough in 15-20 minutes.

Same story on the Ledges, and 15 minutes later I was at the Keyhole and headed for home.

Here are all the pictures I took on the route: