FromSwamptoSummit

I’ve been promising an announcement – and here it is – Long’s Peak in Rocky Mountain National Park is to be this summer’s adventure!

When J and I began mountain climbing and trekking in 2011, we saw no point in starting with something small. So Kilimanjaro, at over 19,000 feet and the highest mountain in Africa, was our poison of choice. We’ve never been to Colorado or climbed a 14-er either – so why not start with one of the most difficult – Long’s Peak via the Keyhole route!

While not the tallest of the so-called 14-ers, at 14,254 feet this summit presents a number of segments of class 3 scrambling. The trail is broken up into sections, each labeled with forbidding names such as the Boulder Field, Ledges, Narrows, the Trough, and the Home Stretch.

J and I have watched any number of YouTube videos, many of which are taken with GoPros and whose goal appears to be to strike terror in the eye of the beholder. My favorite is an 8 minute long one, where the climber repeats at least three times, “it’s not really as bad as the GoPro video makes it out to be.”

While this plan may be slightly insane, we are not so insane as to try this on our own without a guide. We are returning to Wildland Trekking – the company we used for an absolutely perfect trek down the Grand Canyon back in 2013 – see fromswamptosummit.com/2017/02/20/journey-through-time-in-and-about-the-grand-canyon-part-2/

And intrepid hikers M and S will be accompanying us on this latest adventure. Last Saturday after an urban hike we all sat in the porch trying to get our heads around the amount of exposure on this hike – no easy feat when you are looking out at an ever so gentle slope down to a lake and only Florida flatlands beyond.

But where there is will there are ways, and yesterday’s foray to Blue Swan Boulders was the start of a new aspect of training designed to get us to the top. Aside from climbing a rock wall on a cruise ship (remember those?) many moons ago, neither J nor I has ever done any indoor climbing. An indoor bouldering gym consists of multiple walls at various inclines reaching up 15 or 20 feet or so, ornamented with hand and foot holds color coded by level of difficulty. There are no ropes – and you spend a lot of time practicing how to fall.

Although we were clearly the oldest people there we loved it! Talk about a mindfulness practice – as you swing your center of gravity toward that next handhold while reaching with your foot – not much else you can think about. On day 1 we limited ourselves to yellow and beginning green routes – and may not advance much further – but mastering those should translate well for Long’s Peak scrambling.

We ended up with a few scrapes and are pretty sore today but plan to return on Monday. And the craft beer we rewarded ourselves with at the Ivanhoe Park Brewery afterwards was pretty good too!