I woke up on this sunny Saturday morning feeling terrible. My allergies coupled with the 32 miles and 11000 vertical feet the past two days had left me exhausted and unable to rest well. After moping around the house for a while, I decided to go to the east Longs trailhead and see if some exercise would help perk things up. I arrived at the trailhead just before 9:30 to discover that there were >150 cars parked along the road below the trailhead, and of course the parking lot was completely full. Fortunately for me, my friend Peter Sanders was staying at the campground, so I just went and parked by his campsite and was on the trail at 9:30.
Right away, I could tell that I was feeling strong even though I felt exhausted, so I headed up the Phone Line trail and just kept my heart rate between 140 and 145. I was above treeline in 35 minutes, and joined the Jim’s Grove trail after dipping my bottle in the creek as I went across the bridge, sterilizing the water as I walked with my Steripen Adventurer Opti.
Forty minutes later, I walked through Granite Pass and started working my way up the trail from there. As soon as the trail turned to the North toward the switchbacks, I headed uphill across the tundra, straight for Chasm View and Longs North Face. After a bit of climbing, I was over the ridge and on the left edge of the Boulderfield. Soon the relative flatness of the Boulderfield gave way to the climb up to Chasm View, and at 1:50 I was in the vicinity of the easternmost spire at Chasm View. I decided there to drop my water bottle, since I knew I would need both hands to climb through the technical section, and I figured I could downclimb after I summited to retrieve it.
From there, it took 8 minutes to climb up to the start of the technical section, and the real fun began. I could see and hear a group of four climbers up at the top eyebolt getting ready to rap down, but since they weren’t ready yet I continued climbing up. After about 10 minutes and a couple of wet 5.2-5.3 climbing moves, I was standing beside them at the top of the technical section. I asked them if they would keep an eye out for my bottle and carry it with them down to the Boulderfield since there was no way I was going to downclimb that section on wet rock, and they readily agreed. So from there I took off and headed up the steep but easy terrain towards the summit, pausing briefly to take this picture of Chasm View from the upper north face.
By this point I was suffering pretty badly from the altitude, starting to stagger a bit and feeling dizzy, so I had to move a bit slower. I reached the summit in 2hrs 22min, which is 4 minutes slower than my PR which I set in 2008. From there, I quickly hiked across the summit plateau and started down the Homestretch, keeping well to the left of the many people there so I wouldn’t have to wait on them. In 8 minutes I was on the Narrows, and jogged across in a couple of minutes passing 4-5 people. The Trough went quickly as well, as well as the Ledges, and I reached the Keyhole in 26 minutes from the summit. Coming down from there, I kept my eye out for the 4 climbers who might be carrying my water bottle but I didn’t spot them until I was halfway to the Boulderfield campsites. They were taking a break on the rock cliff below the bottom eyebolt, so I turned right and climbed back up to Chasm View. After 30 minutes of hunting, I finally found my water bottle and headed back down towards Jim’s Grove. I took this picture of the scary opening through the rock by Chasm View. The scary thing about this is that there is probably 10 feet of ground between the hole and the edge, so there is an amazing amount of rock overhanging the void there.
On the way down the ridge east of the Boulderfield, I met up with a climbing ranger named Josh who was hiking his way down from the Boulderfield as well. We chatted for a couple of minutes and then I took off for the Jim’s Grove trail, since I needed water pretty badly. I finally made it to the stream just a ways below the main trail and slammed two water bottles, then refilled. During this time, Ranger Josh had made his way down the same trail, and we ended up hiking together nearly all the way to treeline. From there, I ran all the way back down to the trailhead and finished up the trip in 5:45.
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