Over the past few weekends I’ve been able to hike a few 14ers here in Colorado. Last week I hiked Torreys and Greys via the Kelso Ridge route on Torreys. My brother-in-law Fred went with me, along with two of his friends that live in Ft. Collins. Kelso Ridge has some 3rd class scrambling and some great views, and I was able to take some decent pictures. This weekend I drove up to hike Bierstadt and Evans, linking the two together with the Sawtooth ridge route. Descending Evans down to Guanella pass was interesting because it was a bushwack, but I had the opportunity to take some pictures of the wildflowers and even saw some Rocky Mountain Columbine on the descent.

Jason Deugan and I climbed a snow route on Longs Peak yesterday, it’s called The Flying Dutchman and it is a 1,600 foot couloir that begins at Chasm Lake and ends at the Loft, a football-field sized saddle between Longs and Mount Meeker. We started around 2am from the trailhead and hiked about 4 miles to Chasm Lake, in the Longs/Meeker cirque. We climbed the snow sections unroped, opting to rope up for the crux of the climb: a 40 foot section of ice. A short way after the ice crux we were able to remove our crampons and climb up to the Loft on loose rock. From the Loft we hiked around to the back side of Longs and took the Clark’s Arrow route up and around to the Homestretch on the Keyhole route. A short distance and we were on the summit of Longs. We met the three RMNP climbing rangers at the summit who had just climbed Kiener’s Route and then began our descent via the Keyhole. The Keyhole route descends 4,845 feet over a distance of about 8 miles, so we were pretty busted by the time we got back to the car at 7pm. This was my first fourteener and I was pumped to be able to do it via a technical route.

Update: Jason Deugan sent me a few pictures he took of our climb.