Longs Peak
San Luis to Longs Peak
After San Luis, we drove back to Aspen to drop off our friend Tony and grab a few essentials that we forgot, like my crampons and Nicky’s skin for his smaller Kastle skis. Minor details(Phsyche!)
Nicky’s parents treated us to dinner to celebrate the 14er season, so we went to eat at Elina. If you haven’t been there put it on your list! We like to treat ourselves about once a season and this will definatly be our new “fancy spot”. The food is world class. Kind of melt in your mouth, drooling inspired, overwhelming, taken aback rich flavors. My favorite was the Artichoke bruschetta with a holliandse type sauce and a poached egg. It hit me on my levels and leaves me wanting more from a hundred miles down the road.
Trick Ditch Banked Slalom
We woke up at four in the morning to drive the 3.5 + hour drive to Eldora Resort to go to the Trick Ditch Banked Slalom put on by Ten Barrel. We got there, registered got our bibs, taped them on and then went to the race.
Overall the race was good. Course was really short. Tight section up top, then some nice berms and then some big machine made race-car style turns to a pretty flat finish. It was defiantly a wax contingent race. We rode the course 4 times all day. I squeezed in two practice runs and then we had two runs. We were done around two pm. All the time in-between was spent waiting in line for the Race. Maybe next year they can get together categories. I ended up in 2nd at the end of the day but there was a bit of a kerfuffle as, Nicky and I accidentally out the wrong bibs on in the morning.
Anyways, all that mattered to me was I got the $750 purse prize for the race I raced, which I did. Great News! In the parking lot we met up with Jackson Jewitt, who had we had connected a few years ago over instagram, but had yet to met, due to variable snow years, and travel plans. Jackson lives in Boulder via Mammoth CA. He moved to CO to attend CU and started climbing yadda yadda yadda, never left. He is an avid splitboarder, and accomplished climber and we were happy to have his guidance and knowledge going into Longs.
Joining us last minute via a text at 10 pm sent from me…
“meeting at Sandbeach Lake 4:30AM!” Would be Ben Moscona, a ripping young photographer who we are stoked to have working with us! Who we also connected thru instagram.
Longs Peak
Jackson had wanted to meet at 4:30 but we got him to push it back to 5, and by the time we left the trailhead it was closer to 6. In a few short hours we were at the base of the Loft Couloir switching over from our skins to our crampons and ice axe’s. We made good time up to the crux, taking turns in the soft snow bootpacking up to the short crux of some mixed 5th class climbing. Because I got to the climbing first and the snow and ice was fresh, I was able to somewhat easily get up the section. From there, Ben made his way cautiously up and then Jackson. Nicky, who forgot the correct adaptors for his crampons rendering them useless, and multiple dislocations of his shoulder, including a recent one at the banked slalom (he’s needed surgery for over a year, but hasn’t found the time between hunting and skiing seasons) was last and we all feared (but mostly me) that a fall for him would be more than any of us would want to deal with. So I asked Jackson to break out the rope and gently persuaded Nicky to tie up for the bare section of rock. This was also a great excuse and perfect time for me to brush up on my skills with Jackson there to double check me, (which I feel like I always need first rope work of the season).
From there it was short distance to the wind blown saddle at the top of the Loft. We stopped had some lunch here under the protection of a big rock and began to slowly realize how far we still had to go.
From the saddle we walked down about 800 feet and then traversed right, over to the Keplinger’s Couloir. Some fun mixed 4th class mixed climbing and then we made our way into the top of the couloir and the bottom of the homestretch which we were really hoping would hold enough snow for a summit decent. Once at the top of Keplinger’s we traversed left above a large cliff face and towards the last push to the summit thru the homestretch.
Longs peak has a crazy optical illusion when you look at the mountain from the backside it looks like the summit is on the lookers left. But when you get to the summit at the top of the homestretch you are at the summit. The entire top of the mountain is flat, But from down below it looks like the left side is higher. It’s kind of insane. As I came towards, what I thought was the saddle of the homestretch I realized, I was at the top. What a crazy relief.
On top we took some time to eat some cheese and summer sausage, (I actually don’t like summer sausage at all, but our friend tony left it in the camper, and there’s nothing like an insanely long hike to get you to eat the foods you think you don’t really like).
From the summit we dropped into the Homestretch and picked our way thru the first 500 so feet of snow and rock. Nothing pretty but it gets you thru the small section of bullshit to something like 2500 vertical feet of riding.
Once we picked thru the homestretch, we had a few really exposed turns above a big cliff, and then we were into Keplinger’s Couloir. From there it was easy fun riding. Granted our legs were all feeling the 9 + miles of hiking. I always look back on the footage of me riding and remember, hey I did hike for 8 hours before I rode that, I might have been a little tired.
At the bottom of the couloir Jackson was sure to not let us celebrate too much as he knew how long it would take for us to get out of the Wild Basin drainage and back to the trailhead. We were still over 6 + miles from our car.
Those last six miles were a mix of side hilling, side stepping, creek crossing, uphill, downhill all on snow until the final mile. From there the trail we took our boards off and put them on our back to walk. We got back to the car just shy of 12 hours from our departure.
We broke out some Kyla Kombuchas and took off our drenched boots and socks and basked in the somewhat painful glory of our suffer fest success.
For dinner we went to Oskar Blues Brewery in Lyons where we had a selection of AHMAZZING burgers. I got the Black and Blue burger with mac and cheese and Nicky got a burger with goat cheese(his favorite) and fries. We shared the Mud Pie and it was the best mud pie I have had in a long time. I haven’t had one in awhile though.
It was an epic meal ending for an amazing day with great conditions. Low winds, great snow, awesome company and my favorite thing, mountain tops for days!
