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This hike was to try one of the alternate routes to climb Longs Peak instead of the very popular Keyhole route.
My hiking companions were David (David and his wife Cynthia own Airbits, LLC (www.airbits.com)) , my Internet service provider, and their two employees: son Matt, and tech Dave. If you are looking for an internet connection in the Estes Park area, I cannot recommend them highly enough! Cynthia is the pleasant voice you will usually hear on the phone when you call them, and handles many of the important activities of running the business. But you might imagine the anxiety she feels when I run off with the entire technical staff of the company to climb a mountain - out of cell phone reception for many hours! Fortunately, the most likely causes of disruption to their system -- thunderstorms -- are also not good days for mountain climbing. Still, I am sure she was quite glad to have them back in the office!
Here is a photo of our route, taken from the Narrows on Longs Peak looking back to the south towards our starting point. See more details below the photo...
Our route is a minor variation of the Keplinger Route, the route taken by the first white men to ascend Longs Peak. Shown in the photo is a rough sketch of the route we took. Our route started at the Sandbeach Lake trailhead in Wild Basin, and ended by descending the more familiar Keyhole route.
This route is about 2-3 miles longer than simply doing the Keyhole route, and about 1000 ft more elevation gain (approx. 6000 ft gain for this approach). It is also more strenuous, as about half of it is not on established trails. More about that later...
After dropping one vehicle at the Longs Peak trailhead parking lot, we reached our starting point at 2:30 am. Sandbeach lake is 4.5 miles, and a quick pace got us there in almost exactly 2 hours. Sandbeach Lake was dead calm, and magical - you could see stars reflected in the water, and overhead clearly see the Milky Way, and the stars as brilliant pinpoints of light. Jupiter dominated the sky, and Orion hung to the southwest. It was stunning!
Now the fun begins - after a brief snack stop, we circled around the west side of the lake, and began the bushwhacking process, using only headlamps. Our goal was to skirt the east side of Mount Orton. Easier said than done, as you could only barely make out Mt. Orton in the dark, and then only when in a large clear area. But the area north of the lake was mostly marshy, wooded area, hard to find a path, and impossible to see the target.
We did have one false start, but got our bearings again by going back to the lake and starting again. It is interesting bushwhacking through a heavily forested hillside in the dark!
Finally, though, the eastern sky began to lighten, and before long we were able to turn off our headlamps. about the time we entered the treeless area to the left of the large snowfield in the photo. David chose this route because, in spite of the difficulty in bushwhacking the slope in the dark, it was far better than trying to go through the even more heavily treed area in the bottom of the valley along Hunters Creek. I think it was a great call!
After going along the slope for a while, we found a safe place to descend to the valley floor, and after a while of boulder-hopping, had breakfast on a large boulder overlooking the small pond just visible in the photo between Sandbeach Lake and the large pond on the right side. Here my hand-drawn line on the photo is not quite accurate, but you should get the idea.
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