Achievement Unlocked: Longs Peak

Another 2019 yearly goal – getting to Longs Peak. We’d looked for campsite reservations a few times over the summer, hoping to find something up in the boulder field. But it turns out that park rangers have cracked down on limitless distributed camping there (which was the case last time I was up that way, at least 10 years ago) – now there are maybe 6 tent sites total, and camping is limited to those sites. There’s also a surprisingly nice looking toilet building up there now, which I’m sure makes things generally better (to avoid being too specific). We ended up camping in Goblins Forest – only about 1 mile up the trail from the trailhead, but also about a thousand vertical feet. Never bad to have 1k less climbing on your way up a route like Longs.

The hike itself was long but beautiful. We started pretty early, arriving at the boulder field and catching sight of the diamond face around dawn. We got to the top around 9:30am. We’d carried a Jetboil and a couple of hot breakfast pouches with us, and the weather at the top was beautiful, so we ended up having eggs and sausage on the summit. Pretty nice treat!