nuestro unico problema es que nos falta chicha

Sunday, September 16, 2007

Summiting Longs Peak, Rocky Mountain National Park, CO, USA

The final event of our return trip was to attempt the summit of Longs Peak Rocky Mountain National Park--at 14,259 feet, it's the tallest mountain in the park. One can reach the summit entirely in one day, so long as one starts up the trail before 2am and is game for 16 hours of hiking/scrambling. We figured it would be more fun to hike to the boulderfield just below the more technical section and camp the night, allowing us to wake up around 7 to eat breakfast and start for the summit. On the way up, we took a 2 hour detour to Chasm Lake, situated below the face of the diamond (the shear east face of the mountain), on our way up--photo pending...

I don't seem to have a photo, but when we started this hike in the morning there had been a large storm that deposited snow across the peak and left a crampon-defeating film of verglas on the rocks which prevented ascents that day (the first snow of the year). Luckily it had, more or less, melted off by the evening--leaving occasional patches of refrozen ice and a good amount of drinking water right in the boulderfield. It was a bit chilly that night, but our tent held up well in winds that destroyed some less fortunate poles.


looking to the east of longs from the boulderfield


the peak itself--on the far right you can make out the keyhole


I've decided a headlamp isn't worth anything if it can't throw the majestic red light--boiling water for tea and sleeping the

The first waypoint on summit day was pulling ourselves out of our wind battered tent into what we were told were 80mph winds--much worse than usual. Luckily we had balaclavas and hard shells to break the wind, but it would've been better to just have brought proper winter layers--such are the rockies. The first waypoint of the 'climb' was the keyhole, after which the class III route is named--we made our way up there after breakfast around 8 or 830.


Looking across the backside of the keyhole. Due to the structure of the rock, the winds here were quite violent. Only on the way back had they calmed enough such that I wasn't getting blown over and could pull my camera out for this picture.

Many people turned around here, because they just simply weren't prepared for the wind. Without a wind parka it would've been disconcertingly cold, and the nature of Longs is that many people go up unprepared. We pushed on into the wind, happy to have be with a smaller-than-usual number of people on the peak with us.


a view from behind the keyhole


another

The route continues through two long traverses and corresponding climbs that link one to the next and then the peak. They were a lot of fun, though very exposed with high winds. Definitely at the high of class III routes. I suppose that since this isn't so much intended to be a route description I won't get into too much detail--good ones exist on the internet and should be read instead if you have plans to attempt it. But, we took some great pictures...


across the narrows toward the trough


exposed, but there were usually handholds when the route cornered and caught the heaviest winds

The homestretch, which is the final vertical part before the peak, runs up a smooth rock face with a crack in it. It was still pretty iced over in places. We took our time to move carefully up the crack and then finally topped out!


on the summit


looking north across the park


looking off the summit to the boulderfield, if you squint you might see a white pixel that is our tent


sitting together above the diamond on the east fast of Longs


looking to the east down over the diamond onto chasm lake

This is a great peak. We made a good elevation gain (I think 6 or 7 thousand feet), which was really felt--even though Longs isn't as tall as most Bolivian peaks, I had become lost my acclimization in lower elevations since returning. It was a hard climb toward the end, but a great hike to share with Emily and a fine end to an amazing summer.

Somewhat sad not to have much more to post here for awhile. Plans are in the works for round two of travels--this time for an entire year after graduation. I also have a few short trips to various national parks lined up for during breaks from university that I'll write about here. Hopefully this isn't too melancholy of a hiatus.

Thursday, September 6, 2007

Carlsbad Caverns National Park, NM, USA

After finishing our time with NMD, and loading emily's things into her car, we took the long way home. Our first stop was Carlsbad Caverns NP, about 4 hours east of El Paso, TX. The Carlsbad cave network is one of the largest and the system is probably most famous for its immense chambers--the largest houses a 1.5 mile loop trail around its periphery. The neat thing about the cave is that one can enter via the first discovered natural entrance and wind down into its cool interior (about 60 degrees F) from the hot Chihuahuan desert above.


looking back toward the natural entrance

I imagine the best way to describe the features of the cave is via pictures, so here goes. These are all from our walk into the cave and explorations of the big room.


the plankton filtering teeth of "the whales head"


emily and an unnamed feature


looking out into a part of one of the larger chambers--I should note that all these shots were taken on my 50mm prime lens since it is my fastest, but as such I was unable to get really wide angle shots of the interior. The place was enormous.


this tower was more than 2 meters in diameter and spanned from the floor to ceiling--maybe 15 meters in height


taken from across the big room, shows a bit of the size--the ceiling here was at least 100 feet high


neat curtains on the ceiling

We also took a ranger led tour into the "lower room," which is only accessible via a series of ropes and ladders (not chutes). It was alot of fun, but the ranger told us leaving cameras behind was a good idea given the squeezes we would be going through. I've taken my camera to some risky places, so I'm not sure why I didn't just bring it regardless. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures to show from this helmet/headlamp expedition into less-explored realms of the cave. We escaped the crowds with our smaller group and had fun caving.

That night we hiked into the backcountry of the park (permits were free--the right price) and camped in the desert. The heat was quite a contrast.

The next day we would drive to Roswell, NM such that we might tour the international UFO museum there (their webpage, you should go) and then pass for Albequerque. There I got to met Emily's good friend Judy and her husband Keith, with whom we had dinner and spent the night (they were great).