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Longs Peak

Towering landmark attracts thousands of climbers each year

10/28/2005
Source: Northern Colorado Business Report

Author: Steve Olson


At 14,255 feet above sea level, Longs Peak is the tallest mountain in
Northern Colorado; one of the most climbed, too.


"From an icon standpoint, it's obvious why it got that way," said Walt
Borneman, who wrote a climber's guide to Colorado's peaks over 14,000
feet, or fourteeners. "Just about anywhere on the plains, you look and
there's Longs Peak."


Longs Peak, the only fourteener in Rocky Mountain National Park, got
its name nearly two centuries ago, when the first U.S. expedition under
Major Stephen Long was mapping the South Platte River in 1820. For the
next 50 years, it was one of those peaks considered unclimbable.


"Probably because of the east face," Borneman said. "When you climb
Longs you have to go around it to climb it."


Although the first recorded ascent was made by Grand Canyon explorer
John Wesley Powell in 1868, its 175 routes to the summit have been
climbed thousands, maybe millions, of times since. A 2003 Colorado
State University study estimated that 26,000 people try to reach the
summit annually and 10,000 of them make it.


Most of them take the Keyhole Route, considered the only non-technical
path to the top of the mountain. It might be the easiest way up, but
it's still eight miles long with an elevation gain of 4,852 feet and
the potential for unforgiving, if predictable, weather.


The Rocky Mountain National Park Service conducts about 60 rescue
missions a year on the mountain. According to park service records, 55
people have been killed climbing Longs Peak, 35 of them from falls and
seven on the Keyhole Route.


Dougald MacDonald, author of "Longs Peak: The Story of Colorado's
Favorite Fourteener," doesn't think Longs Peak is a dangerous climb,
but "if you have a fear of heights or there are places where there are
icy or wet rocks, you would have to take a lot of care not to fall
off."


Last summer, when the ice never melted, the Park Service declared part
of the Keyhole Route a technical climb and novice climbers were shut
out of the summit.


When the gold rush in Colorado was in full swing, Longs Peak was looked
at as the place to mine. "There were a lot of gold mines on mountains,"
said Borneman. "Some of them were on the summit." However, the mineral
belt that was exploited in Colorado ran across the center of the state,
far to the south and west of Longs.


Longs Peak is more a landmark than anything else. Farmers looked at it
as something that loomed over the valleys of the northern Front Range,
stolid and silent, and knew if there was a lot of snow on the summit it
meant that there was going to be a lot of runoff for their fields come
summer. A silhouette of Longs has been used in newspaper logos, and the
"twin peaks" in the Twin Peaks Mall in Longmont are Longs and its
nearby companion Mount Meeker.


There is a feature between Longs and Meeker mentioned by James Michener
in his book "Centennial." If you look at it from the northeast it
resembles a beaver climbing up Longs between the peaks.


"People were coming out here for a while looking for the beaver, to see
if they could spot it," Borneman recalled.