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It had been last summer since I’d started a trip a couple hours before daylight, when I joined a group of friends from RMNPforums.com for a day of climbing Longs Peak, and it felt special getting an early start once again. I’d gotten a good night’s sleep and I felt strong as we headed briskly into the woods to get out of the cold wind in the parking lot.
It was a wonderful fall morning with everything being damp enough to make the trail firm and to bring out the scents of fall. The scent from the first fallen aspen leaves, as we passed through aspen groves, seemed to give me added energy and we kept up the brisk pace until we turned off the Park trail into the wild.
We were perhaps traveling a bit too fast because I walked right past our first turn on the trail. I was leading without a headlamp, as I often do, and relying on the person’s headlamp behind me to see the trail. Well, I had my focus on the trail itself and I wasn’t looking for the sign or expecting the turn so quickly. Not that it was all bad because we came to a bridge we shouldn’t be crossing only twenty feet past the turn and I figured it out.
I imagine it cast some doubts, in the other’s minds, of my trip leading capabilities and I was careful not to cross that line again because some trust was going to be needed later in the day.
Time and the trail flew by in the dark and we soon arrived at a dark Mills Lake where the cool breeze felt great. We quickened the pace a bit, as we traveled along Mills Lake in the flat sections, to stay warm and do all we could to help accomplish our goal of circumnavigating the upper end of Glacier Gorge and visiting every lake in Glacier Gorge.
There was just enough light to see Jewel Lake from the trail as we passed and we could also see frost on the log walkways going across the marshes behind Jewel. We were all pretty careful on the slippery logs and I don’t think any of us slipped.
By the time we got to the turnoff for Shelf Lake it was getting light enough to see well and we crossed the river to begin our ascent up the canyon side to Shelf Lake.
The route to Shelf is very steep but the route is being used so much that it is well worn and obvious compared to trips up it I had done before. The going was slower on the steep terrain but it was easy to keep a steady pace with the path so obvious.
We had left the Glacier Gorge trailhead at 5:00 and we arrived at Shelf Lake at 8:30 after some five miles and 2,000 ft. of vertical gain.
We headed up the hanging canyon to Solitude Lake, a little over 200 ft. more gain, and passed the smooth rock with the little streams spread out making dark lines on the rock. There are two people in this picture, giving it a bit of scale.
People
Yep, everyone was feeling real strong at Solitude.
Our next goal was Frozen Lake, that lies near the back of Glacier Gorge, so we dropped down out of the hanging canyon and traversed south across the east slop of Arrowhead. I’d done this traverse a few times before and it drops over 400 ft. to a shelf that leads up Glacier Gorge. There were a few ups and downs as well as the occasional pile of logs to clamber over but we were still strong and moving quite fast for bushwhacking.
On previous trips I had dropped down to Black Lake, at the south end of the bench, but today we planned to climb up and traverse to Frozen Lake. Black Lake lies at the bottom of a huge cirque that has many drainages coming down into the lake off of a higher rock shelf. We planned to climb up to that shelf, which extends/wraps around the entire end of Glacier Gorge, and cross it to Frozen Lake.
I’d never been up the route I was proposing but I’ve looked at it many times from down at Black Lake and I’d also talked to a person that had went that way. I was told it didn’t require a rope.
Well, this is where the trust I had been working on all day came into play. I explained to the rest of the hardy crew that we should make it but there was a chance we’d have to back off and come back down. We were all still feeling very strong and the day was still young enough that we would beat any afternoon thunderstorms that happened along while we were up on the exposed bench.
Somewhere along the way I must have gained the needed trust because it was a unanimous decision to climb up the bench giving us some 700 ft. of vertical gain before reaching Frozen Lake.
I didn’t pick the best of routes to get to the bottom of the climb but after a bit of timber bashing we reached the bottom of the climb. The route up the gully was obvious enough as long as we didn’t chose the wrong ledge to traverse out of the gully and onto the high shelf.
It had been some time since I’d climbed up any gully that I’d never been up before and this gully was beautiful. There was one climbing move that was very easy but it had some exposure below it and I wouldn’t consider doing the climb if the rock was wet. Everyone enjoyed the climb and the views and we found ourselves out onto the shelf and in the drainage below McHenrys Peak.
Looking to the N.E. and down Glacier Gorge gave us a sense of how far we’d come to this point.
Across the canyon to the east stood Longs Peak with the bench we were on extending over to Longs and around what looks like a dark obis which contains Black Lake at the bottom.
McHenrys Peak loomed over us to the west with Stoneman Pass on the south corner of the peak.
We traveled S.E. while gaining a bit on our way to Frozen Lake.
It was 12:00 when we reached Frozen Lake and the clouds to the north looked to be building a bit.
Arrowhead, with Shelf Lake now behind it, was to the north of us.
I was feeling a bit tired when we reached Frozen Lake but we had lunch and I got recharged. It wasn’t like the energy I had in the morning but onward we headed to Green and Italy Lakes.
We headed toward the north side of The Spearhead and then traversed the north side of it until we were able to climb up and cross the N.E. ridge of Spearhead before dropping down to Green and Italy.
Edited by Igloo Ed, 11 October 2011 - 06:11 PM.
