Longs Peak | Climbing the Most Deadly Mountain in Colorado

Good morning everyone. In today's hike we're going to go up Long's Peak at Rocky Mountain National Park. It's at 14,259 feet. It's about a 14 mile round trip hike with 5,000 feet of elevation gain. Last mile and a half quite a bit of rock scrambling so it's kind of more than just a hike. The last time I climbed this one was 10 years ago so I figured it's time to get back up here. It's September 30th. It's a pretty nice day. Left the trailhead at 5 a.m. Not a whole lot to see because it was dark. Trying some brand new shoes that I just got. Merrell Moab 3's. First hike I've done with them. Getting a little bit of a blister already. I taped that up. Hopefully that'll be sufficient from making it too much worse. Following some birds up the trail. Well that's no good. As you can see here on the boulder field too there's some places to camp. There's a little campground here. You need a permit. Let's look at this setup. You got these rings. Kind of block the wind. So we have to do navigate all these boulders up to the keyhole. It'll start getting steeper as we go along. So pretty much now from the campground up to the keyhole we're making our own path. Rocks aren't too big right here. It's going to be more rock scrambling as we continue. All right getting closer to the keyhole. I'd strongly suggest pacing yourself coming up through here. You're going to need that energy later on. Final rock scramble to the keyhole. Starting out here on the ledges just past keyhole at about 13,200 feet. So as you can see to my right here there's a pretty substantial drop-off. Looking the best way to navigate through here. There's one of those yellow bullseyes that you follow. See them continuing to give you a little rod. Here comes a little downhill section. This downhill section leads over there into the trough kind of where that snow is at the bottom of the trough. You can see all those bullseyes. They go all the way up there. Probably about 600 feet of vertical. Time to go up some slabs. A little ice over on this side. Proper routes over that way. See the bullseye. I'm going to work over this way a little bit. Probably halfway up the trough so far. A bunch of helicopter activity back there by McHenry's Peak. All right looking back down the trough. There's Mills Lake. About three quarters of the way up. All right near the top of the trough. How's it going? How are you doing? Good. Teamwork. Hell yeah. Appreciate it guys. Okay top of the trough. Here's the narrows. Benchmark that rock. It's called the hearth. Keyboard of the winds. Up here on the narrows. This is probably one of the more dangerous parts of the hike. Definitely don't want to fall here. But you know it's plenty of stuff to hold on to. You know stuff like this. You need to go around the outside of this or play a little safer. Go through there. Now it kind of starts to widen out a little bit. Pretty good place to put your feet. Just don't put them down there. But yeah that's kind of the narrowest part behind me. So it's part of them on now. I'm probably a little low. You can see the bullseyes up there. So I think guys let's climb right up this. Back at the narrows right before the homestretch. Gotta go up this little thing. Bullseye. All right here comes the final part of the homestretch. Gonna fall those cracks. On the final part of the homestretch. Very flat summit. Let's take a look around. Mount Meeker. Twin Sisters. There's a view on the summit looking down towards Chasm Lake. Head back down. Time to go down the homestretch first. Kind of these slabs of rock here. They're probably a 45 degree angle. Not the best traction. But there's kind of some stuff to kind of dig your shoe into. Grab your hands onto. Well here we are where the homestretch ends. Now we get back on the narrows. That looks fun. Let's take another look at the narrows. There's a rock called the hearse. Keyboard of the winds. We're getting to the more narrow part of the narrows. What side would you walk on? There's usually something to hold on to. You can see one of those bullseyes up there. Help keep you on course. It's a ways down. So this area here is the start of the narrows. Probably the most narrow part. End of the narrows. So I'm looking down the trough and right here these rocks. It's probably the most technical move of this whole hike. It does take a little effort to climb up them. Not much to hold on to. Another view of that rock which is kind of the crux move of this whole hike. There's some great fall colors over there towards Mills Lake and Lake Hiaha. You can kind of see that in the background. But here's more of what it's like going down the trough. The camera probably doesn't really show how steep this is. There's one of those bullseyes. Let's kind of go this way. I'm getting there. If you look behind me though look at those clouds. I'd be a little nervous if I was headed up. I think we can go that way. They're coming in from the east. That's actually kind of what the forecast showed. The models just kind of running a little behind schedule. So who knows when I get to the keyhole there might be a surprise. At the bottom of the trough that's a relief. Now it's time to get back on the ledges. Just kind of straight ahead. About halfway across the ledges and it's been uphill. You can see more of those bullseyes there. Pretty soon be at the keyhole and it's all downhill from there. So there's a bullseye. But what's the best way? There's one on that rock. Yeah it's not too hard to find your way if you kind of pay attention. Those things were painted everywhere. More cloud buildup. We got a nice sign. Keyhole. That goes to the false keyhole. I hear it's very dangerous. That false keyhole. Now we have to go back down again. Now we have this little slide to go down. That's pretty slick. Check that out. Here comes the keyhole. It's a little more ledge to walk on. Scramble down some boulders. Get down the boulder field. Then we'll be back on normal trail. Standing here in the keyhole. So a little while back I made a video going to Black Lake, Frozen Lake, and Green Lake. If you look down there you'll see Green Lake, Frozen Lake, Black Lake. That's actually Blue Lake. Thanks for watching. See y'all next time.