So I live in Colorado now. And hence, I have become that quasi-outdoor person who rides bicycle to work, goes for Skiing and goes for a jog when ashamed by his 50-year-old neighbor who runs in local marathons. But must I climb as well. Motivated by an urge to prove that my thirty-something frame can still take it, I decided to take on LONGS PEAK, the highest non-technical climb of the Colorado Rockies. I was told that climb is not very difficult, just long. Seven and half mile each way, to be precise. The base camp is an altitude of 9500 ft. and Peak top stands over 14259 ft. Peak is open to non technical climbers for two months a year during summer time. My comrade-in-arms Sardar Arvinder Pal Singh agreed to join but chickened out later. AP Singh lives in Wisconsin and the tallest thing he has ever climbed is his two-storey office building.
One has to start early in the morning, no later than 2:00-3:00 AM (Yikes!!!). Otherwise, you might get caught in afternoon thunderstorms and nature god always looks for an easy sacrifice. I camped out in the nearby Estes Park the night before, picked my backpack and started at 2:45 AM. First two miles is an easy hike through a dense forest, which has to be dealt with your headlight on. As steepness increased, I began to feel the impact of my heroic anti-gravity performance. I got to experience, first hand, the symptoms of altitude sickness. Fortunately I was well prepared. Consume a lot of water and pace yourself with frequent but short breaks. Only thing I did not feel short of was “shortness of breath”. For someone who spent a good part of his life in plains of Punjab, I sure do need a lot of oxygen, which was apparently absent at those altitudes.
Every now and then a slight drizzle ensued and rain gear came in handy. On Longs peak, as you go higher, the lights of surrounding cities become visible one by one. First Longmont, Boulder and then Denver. If you look up, you will catch a shooting star as well. Wish for more wisdom, if you see one….
Around 6:00 AM, the Sun began to rise and it gave a golden glow to the mountains around. I took a few pictures and treaded on. After some 5 miles, I reached Boulder field. It is named so as the place is full of Volkswagen size boulders. There is no exact trail here and you have to just jump from one boulder to another in the general direction of “Keyhole”, which is visible from far….
Unfortunately, in spite of summer time, it had snowed the night before and most of the boulders were covered with thin sheet of ice. I decided to go up to keyhole avoiding any major slips. While close, I saw a fellow climber ahead of me falling hard…. and I thought I heard a crack. The person was OK. The cracking noise was that of my broken resolve. I got close but wisdom prevailed and I made a U-turn.
I took a few more pictures, cursed the snow god for a missed chance and turned around. Return journey though is with gravity but still very difficult as there is a lot of thumping on the knees. With good sunlight, I got a panoramic view of Rockies. I made back to the base by 11:00 AM, thus covering some eleven miles in eight hours. My legs felt like a ton of bricks that night. I wish there was no snow, I wish I had taken some gear to handle snow, I wish Arvinder Pal Singh had joined me…...well there will be more chances down the road....
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