Longs Peak - Notch Couloir

Longs Peak, east face

On Sunday (12/11) Grace and I attempted the Notch Couloir on Longs Peak. It turned out to be a bit more challenging than either of us expected, and we ended up spending close to 24 hours on the mountain.  Such experiences are always a strange combination of sublime and excruciating. It had been years since my last similar experience, and it was a new high (low?) point for Grace.

We approached to the basin beneith Mt. Lady Washington on Saturday so as to have a nice early start, and give us a bit of time to acclimatize. The next morning we were up at 03:45 to melt water and pack up. We started moving a little before 05:00.

By 11:00 we had ascended Lambs Slide ( 30-40 degrees, bulletproof snice) and traversed Broadway to base of the notch couloir, which I thought left plenty of time to climb to the summit (1500' above). I was also intending to simul-climb nearly the whole thing. Instead, we ended up belaying five pitches of fantastic moderate but sustained climbing. Ice, mixed, dry tooling, and even a bit of steep powder kept things exciting. There was very little of the easy snow I had anticipated. While great fun, this took a long long time.  I had hoped our night out at around 11,000' would provide some acclimatization. It did. Neither of us felt sick, but it wasn't enough for us to be able to move quickly.

One way or another, we were three full-length pitches up the couloir before I realized that we were rapidly running out of daylight. At that point we made the decision to "fail upward" as the risks entailed by reversing our ascent route seemed greater than going to the top of the couloir and descending an easier route on the back (west) side.  We had plenty of warm cloths, an emergency bivy shelter, a great weather forecast, and a moon just one day past full. The prospect of nightfall didn't bother me much. On the other hand, my knowledge of this descent route was limited to it's mere existence, and I was relying on our map to help me figure it out.

We reached The Notch right after sunset. The moon rose as Grace finished the last pitch, but distorted into an oval, and red as blood. We found an old bivy ledge and hunkered down in our shelter to wait for the moonlight to strengthen. At this point I found that I'd left our map in the tent, and looking west down the gully I couldn't tell if it would go. The first bit at least would be a rappel, and rapelling into strange gullies is something I like to avoid. Without at least having a map, we weren't willing to commit to it.

We made calls to our parents to let them know we were healthy and well equipped, but going to be out longer than expected. They didn't know we were out to begin with, so I don't think the call was very reassuring. What I didn't want happening was for RMNP rangers to call them (the emergency contact number) with the news we were overdue without them having heard a word from us.

Not wanting to descend the west gully without more information, we began to explore the route to the summit, form where we could descend the old Cables route with some confidence, having studied that route thoroughly. But when I located what seemed to be the easiest route, it appeared more risky than I wanted. We'd have to traverse a snow-covered low 5th class slab, and any slip would result in a nasty pendulum fall. Cold, dark, and tired I thought we could manage; add even a minor injury and we'd be in real trouble. So we retreated back to the notch, looking for other options.

Finally, I decided it would be prudent to sacrifice my ego in the name of safety, and called my friend Jason. He was able to confirm that I'd found the correct route to the summit, but also read us the description of the south-westward descent I had originally hoped for. He very generously offered to hike up and assist us, but armed with the fresh descent beta, I thought we'd be OK on our own.

The descent was beautiful, painful, and uneventful. We moved slowly and carefully, stopping to rest often. At 03:20 Monday morning we crawled back into our tent, got the stove going, and started rehydrating. Chicken soup never tasted so good. Then we slept like the dead until Grace's alarm woke us around 08:00.

We made several mistakes:

- It was pretty irresponsible to put down my parents as our emergency contact, and not tell them where we were going or when we'd be back. I was thinking of it more in the "next of kin" kind of light than in the more useful version of having someone know our plans. It didn't even occur to me to call before we left. 

- I should have done my homework a bit better, and known how to descend from the notch without having to call for outside help. Climbing is all about self-reliance. It's a pretty major failure when you need outside input to get down safely. If I hadn't been able to reach Jason, we would have been forced to go over the summit to the descent route I had planned on. This probably would have worked out fine, but it would have been more difficult and dangerous.

- I dramatically underestimated the impact of the altitude on our (and particularly my) physical performance. The climbing wasn't hard enough to account for our slowness, and even belaying the pitches we did, we could have climbed the same ground hours faster at a lower elevation.

Big thanks to Jason for being there when I called, getting us the information we needed, and even offering to come up and help us down if we needed it!