Why I Failed to Summit Longs Peak

I’m not used to failure when I hike. When I start a hike, getting to the top seems like a formality to me. Sure, it’s never guaranteed, but if I do my research beforehand, pack the proper gear and the weather stays true to the forecast, I generally summit the mountain. Fatigue, mental or physical, are something I usually battle, but always overcome. Sure, I have been turned around on a mountain before, but none as frustrating, mentally draining and morally defeating as my failed summit on Longs Peak via the Loft route.

The summer and fall of 2019 were tough times to find free time. Between personal travel, work, and training for an ironman, it was tough to find free weekends. After finally knocking off the Little Bear Peak to Blanca Peak Traverse, my sights shifted on Longs Peak – my last 14er. I settled on a weekend in September and was ready to finish the 14ers, a group of mountains I had been working for 3+ years to complete. I think that’s where the problem started though: I was ready to finish the 14ers, not ready to attempt to finish the 14ers. 

Trip planning for Longs Peak was essentially the same as I had done for the previous 57 14ers: checked the weather forecast, packed the usual gear, read about the route(s) we were planning on taking and planned an arrival time to the TH. My friends Nick and Rick were going to join me on the hike to help celebrate my accomplishment. We had summit beers lined up, celebration beers for the parking lot and were even going to meet up with our wives’ in Boulder for even more celebration beverages. I never believe in celebrating an accomplishment before it happens, but I also saved Longs Peak for last so that Jackie could meet up with me after. 

Longs Peak is known to be super popular, so we planned on arriving at the trailhead at 2AM to ensure we could get a parking spot. Camping at or near the trailhead for Longs Peak is next to impossible, this meant a night of not sleeping for all three of us since we were going to be driving from home. We arrived at the trailhead on time, had no issue with parking and started hiking in the dark. It was 2:45AM when we started and arrived to Chasm Lake around 5:00AM. We did not want to start the remaining route up Longs Peak via the Loft in the dark, so we decided to kill some time. It was extremely windy so we found a little rock cave near the lake and hunkered down. 

Sitting there huddled in the dark, cold, windy morning weather – all three of us started to add layers as our heartbeats settled down and the sweat on our backs cooled. It was downright freezing and the wind seemed to rip through any and all layers of clothing. Since I had not been doing a lot of hiking lately, I seemed to be in summer mode – only carrying 2 additional layers instead of the 3+ I usually would in the fall. After putting on all of my layers, I still could not get warm – my body violently chattering in the cold. Even though the wind was somewhat blocked by the rocks we were huddled under, it would still rip through the cracks seemingly every 30 seconds. It was awful. Eventually, I was mentally broken and I took out my emergency blanket and wrapped it around my body as a last resort to get warm. 

After nearly an hour of huddling under the rocks, we decided to keep moving. We were all still very cold but knew the sun was going to come up soon. Pairing that with our blood pumping again, we figured to warm up quickly. We kept hiking and the sun began to rise. We did warm up, but the winds remained relentless. They were constantly there but we almost forgot about them at times, until the gusts picked up and would cause us to lose our balance. As we hiked up the loft route of Longs Peak, we stopped to enjoy the sunrise, had some fun scrambling on rocks and eventually found our way out of this section and to the ridgeline. 

The saddle in between Longs Peak and Mt Meeker is a large flat area and this is where the problems really started for us. Typically, I would know a route like the back of my hand before attempting a hike – but for some reason, I didn’t study much about Longs Peak before hiking. Sure, I had all of the information on my phone, but we were to close to the summit, I didn’t really think twice about it. What I couldn’t ignore were the winds. They were downright miserable. The gusts were so strong that we had to keep three points of contact with the ground at all times or would literally be blown over. With every step we took, the winds seemed to get even stronger. They were mentally demoralizing and caused us to get off the route to the summit. 

Instead of skirting around the Beaver (a false summit right next to the true summit of Longs) like the route called for, we basically hiked right up it. Typically, this would not be a deal breaker as there are ways around this section to reach the summit of Longs Peak, but the winds were so strong, none of us could even stand straight, let alone hike or climb class 3/4/5 terrain. We stumbled around for 10-15 minutes, trying desperately to find the trail. We could not spot cairns, we could not find the landmarks from the route description, we could not see and breathing became harder. 

The wind was eating through my clothing and I felt like I was standing naked on the massive mountain. Feeling cold turned to shivers, shivers turned to violent chatters and if you were standing next to me you wouldn’t have been able to tell because the wind was moving my entire body like I was weightless. To Rick’s credit, he kept on trying to find the trail to the summit when it was pretty clear that Nick and I had mentally checked out. While Rick was stumbling around in the wind, Nick and I looked at each other and I gave the I’m done sign. Rick came back to where we were standing holding on to rocks to stop us from blowing away in the wind and we decided to call it. None of us were happy about it, especially myself. According to our watches, we were only 500 vertical feet from the summit of Longs Peak and had about another ¼ mile of hiking to reach the summit. 

Ultimately though, none of us knew where the trail was but did know that to gain the summit we had some exposed class 3 and 4 terrain to hike still. Since we were having a hard time standing on flat ground, none of us wanted to venture onto terrain that required us to have balance and solid holds or risk falling. Even after summiting, we would still have 3+ miles of exposed hiking to return back to class 1 terrain. Safety is always king and for that reason we all begrudgingly headed back down the way we came. 

The hike down was super sketchy because those relentless winds that were blowing directly at us on the way up were now quite literally pushing us down the mountain. The strong winds paired with the loose terrain caused me to lose my balance several times and even knocked me to the ground on 2 or 3 occasions. I was so bummed out and pissed off but knew that I had to stay locked in mentally until we got back down to Chasm Lake and out of harms way. After another few hours of hiking and battling the winds, we eventually did reach the lake. We were all disappointed but knew we had made the right decision as the winds even at the lake were very strong. 

Reflecting back on this hike, I am still disappointed but not necessarily with the failure to reach the summit. More so, I am disappointed in myself: not doing enough research on the route, double checking the weather and not being packing enough layers for the cold temperatures and high winds. I treated the hike up Longs Peak like a victory lap to celebrate my accomplishment of hiking all the 14ers, instead of what the hike actually was: another very challenging 14,000+ foot mountain. 

Even after seeing others summit Longs Peak via the keyhole route on the same day, there is no doubt we made the right decision to turn around when we did. We were the only other hikers we saw all day on the Loft route and had absolutely zero information to tell us if the winds were any better on the other side of Longs Peak. We also started the hike as early as we possibly could and that the winds were forecasted to be stronger later in the day. Obviously, this was not my day to summit Longs Peak and complete the 14ers. It sucks and I was served a heaping portion of humble pie but I took a lot of lessons away from this attempt and it will make the day that I finally do check off Longs Peak that much sweeter. 

Watch a recap of the failed attempt here and if you have questions or comments about the hike to Longs Peak, leave a comment below or follow me on Instagram!