Hiking Longs Peak

Narrows

The Trough

The Home Stretch(see the little people at the top)

Monday I hiked Longs Peak, its summit is 14,255, it was the first 14er i have ever done. One of the most popular but also one of the hardest ones in Colorado. Normally it should take around 11 hours for the 15 mile hike. There is quite a bit of a (non-technical) kind of treacherous climbing the last couple of miles. It was pretty amazing! Part of the last stretch is 1/2 mile climbing at a 35% angle then you get to the narrows a 1,000-foot decline the width of a sidewalk but in some place much much narrower. After all that you get to something they call the "home stretch" a class 3 climb that requires the use of all four limbs. From the bottom of Home Stretch it seems like there is still a thousand feet to go, but there are only 500 feet left. These 500 feet are at a 45-degree incline though. It is a really amazing hike. One of my hiking partners got very bad altitude sickness during the hike. She made it to the summit but it took a lot longer and then going down it was a lot worse. This hike should have taken about 11 hours but because she was so sick it took us 18 hours. She was so sick we had to take her to the emergency room when we got down. She was throwing up and could not hold anything down. The next day she was doing much better. We started on the trail head at 2:30am and got down at 8:30pm. That day I was up 24 hours straight so I have been trying to recover. I loved it though and would love to do it again sometime.