Skyline Traverse on Longs

February 23, 2002

This past summer Mark Oveson organized a trip to climb the Skyline Traverse on Longs. It fell through for a variety of reasons. So when the choice of what route to climb came up for Homie and I, the Skyline Traverse was the logical choice. I’m getting ahead of myself. I wasn’t planning on climbing Longs. In fact, I tried about everything to get out of it.

You see, Homie and I are trying to climb Longs Peak every month of the year. Homie needed a February ascent, but I didn’t. I climbed it in February back in 1995 when I did a two-day ascent of the North Face. It was supposed to be warm on Saturday and I wanted to go rock climbing. In fact, I had plans to climb with Hardly down in Clear Creek Canyon. Nice, warm sport climbing versus freezing my butt off up on Longs.

Homie called me on Friday afternoon. I didn’t want to see him go alone, but I wanted rock climbing. As I hung up the phone, I got an email from Hardly. He couldn’t go. Dang. I forwarded the email to Homie with the note: “I’m running out of excuses…” I decided to think about it over dinner and we’d talk later.

Watching the Olympics that night, I was indecisive. The clock kept getting later and I was hoping that by just not deciding the issue would go away. Not to let me off the hook so easily, Homie called. He offered the Skyline Traverse and I acquiesced. No sooner than I hung up the phone did I realize that I needed to set up a little-boy sitter as Sheri does her track workouts on Saturday morning. It was late and the sitter wasn’t home. I left a message to call until 10 p.m. but I wasn’t hopeful. Actually, I was hopeful – that I had escaped the predicted high winds (40-50 mph) on Longs. When the sitter called at 9:30 saying that she was available, I was stuck and began packing my gear.

I packed my 60-meter 8.1mm rope, a set of stoppers, four Aliens, and five slings. I took crampons, one axe, a down vest, 70-ounces of water, and some food. I had negotiated a leisurely meeting time of 5:30 a.m. in Boulder. We were hiking at 6:30 a.m. just as the sun was rising.

Photo 1: Sunrise at 6:30 a.m. at the Longs Peak Trailhead (elevation 9405 feet)

I wore plastic boots, pile bibs and a full Gortex suit and Homie was similarly dressed, but it was relatively warm in the parking lot. The trail was hard packed snow for most of the way to timberline, but one short section had only a single postholed track. We even encountered a wanded section. At the Chasm Junction, we headed towards the East Face and away from the standard route.

Photo 2: Homie and the East Face of Longs. We climbed the left skyline. The Notch is prominently shown just left of the summit.

Our goal wasn’t the fearsome East Face, however. The Skyline Traverse involves climbing up the third class Loft to the saddle between Mt. Meeker (13,911) and Longs Peak (14.255). Then it heads directly towards the summit of Longs up a structure known as the Beaver. At the top of the Beaver, which is over 14.000 feet, we’d have to rappel 100 feet into the Notch. From there we’d climb the Stepladder (5.5) up to the summit.

Photo 3: Homie climbing up the Loft Couloir

A cliff band blocks the top of the Loft and we traversed out towards Meeker and then back to the Loft. As we neared the Loft, we were finally hit with the full force of the predicted winds. Moving at all became very difficult and if I didn’t brace myself securely, I’d be blown down the slope a step or two. The wind plagued us most of the way up the Beaver, but diminished the further we got away from the saddle low point.

Photo 4: Homie making the traverse in the Loft

Homie quickly located the rappel slings at the top of the Beaver and then he backed up the slings with one of his own. He finished the anchor by leaving a locking biner (a booty biner he had found) at this station. I tossed the rope down into the Notch, but it was blown back up above my head. We worried about the rope getting hung. We rappelled exactly 100 feet to the top of the Notch and, much to our relief, the rope pull down cleanly.

Photo 5: Homie rappelling into the Notch

Here I asked Homie how he wanted to work the upcoming crux technical section. He said, “I’ve led it before and in this situation, I prefer to let the fastest person lead. You take it, Bill.” Fastest person? I was dragging behind Homie up to the top of the Beaver and I’ve now been designated the “fastest leader.” I wanted to live up to his confidence, and moved up the pitch as quickly as possible. Naturally, by “quickly as possible” I mean very slowly as that was the best I could do on the steep terrain at 14.000 feet.

After I crossed the Notch, but before I started up the Stepladder, I stopped to take a photo of Homie. Before I continue with the story, I must mention one curious thing about the gear we carried. Between the two of us, we carried nine, that’s nine, pairs of gloves. Why so many for a pair that likes to travel light? Certainly concern over the cold was one factor. Another might have been my clumsiness. Suffice to say that we finished the climb with eight and a half pairs of gloves.

Photo 6: Homie high above Chasm Lake

I ran out two hundred feet of rope, past a couple of tricky sections, and Homie followed. The rest of the route was probably 4^th class, but we roped one more long pitch to the summit as a precaution. We topped out just past 11:30 a.m. to find a couple other climbers. They had just climbed the North Face, our planned descent route, and they took the following photo.

Photo 7: On the summit with Meeker in the background

I like this photo as it makes me look particularly thin and studly – not goofy at all. Actually, I’m a lot heavier than I look here. I out weigh Homie by fifty pounds, tipping the scales at a wispy 220 pounds. Doesn’t my head look out of proportion with my Homer Simpson-esque body here?

Just as we stepped onto the summit, three military fighter jets come screaming out of the west. One of them passes well beneath us, just a couple hundred feet above the Loft. They were probably patrolling for terrorists or something…

We signed the registry and beat an efficient retreat down the North Face. We passed the other party before the rappels, did a single 100-foot rappel, and downclimbed the rest of the North Face, pulling out our axes for the steep, hard snow. We made it down to the Boulder Field campsites in around an hour and took a well-needed break.

The winds had calmed and the day was downright warm. We were overdressed, but that’s a problem I don’t mind during a winter ascent of Longs. On the way out we saw a small herd of Bighorn Sheep just off the trail. It was the first time either of us had seen sheep up on Longs.

Photo 8: Bighorn Sheep on Longs Peak

We got back to the cars 8:28 after leaving them. It was my fastest winter ascent. I’ve now climbed Longs eighteen times via fourteen different routes. This was my fourth winter ascent, third one-day winter ascent. All of my one-day winter ascents have been with Homie. The previous two were on the first day of 2000 and the last day of 2001.