Grand Slam
July 28, 2002
Gerry Roach’s guidebooks are a kick. They are also a route-tickers dream. He only lists routes of relatively moderate difficulty and he marks a number of them as “Classics.” He also dreams up enchainments and gives them enticing names. In Roach’s RMNP guidebook he describes one enchainment called the Grand Slam. Then, to really provoke an effort, he gives it“Classic” status.
Now in baseball of course a Grand Slam is a four-bagger. Apparently in mountain climbing, a Grand Slam is a five-peaker. Gerry’s Slam includes the summits, in order, of Meeker, Longs, Pagoda, Storm, and Mt. Lady Washington. The roundtrip is 17 miles and around 7500 vertical feet – a big day for anyone. I was further enticed to try this route because it included two summits upon which I hadn’t trod: Pagoda and Storm.
I love Longs Peak. I’ve climbed it twenty times by sixteen routes in every month of the year. You’d think I would have done Longs about everyway you could do Longs, but there is always a new twist. I had never climbed Longs and another peak in the same day. The Grand Slam would remedy that hole in my resume with style.
I queried a number of partners to join me and got all sorts of excuses from kid watching to bedroom painting to mountain biking to wedding preparations. Luckily I pinged War n’ Peace just after his weekend plans got cancelled. War n’ is fit and ambitious, but he had been away from altitude for awhile and was a little apprehensive. The day before our outing he went up to Mt. Audubon to test the waters. He easily climbed the 3000 feet to the 13,000+-foot summit and felt ready to go. He also discovered a very chilly wind, which would revisit us the next day.
The route is basically a circumnavigation of Longs Peak with out-and-back’s to each peak. The course looks like this:
We met in Boulder at 4 a.m. and were hiking up the trail exactly at 5 a.m. Indeed it was cold. The strong wind that would hammer us all day long coupled with the chilly temperatures made it feel like autumn in the mountains. This is one of my favorite times to be in the mountains, but it was a bit early and my thin gloves were not sufficient. Both of us got numb hands while ascending our first peak.
We hiked at a brisk pace and passed numerous parties down low. This was War n’s first foray to the Longs Peak area and all the peaks would be new to him. I assured him we’d be alone once we took the Chasm Lake Cut-off, but even here we passed a couple of hikers. Lower down on the trail people were already turning around due to the conditions and we wondered how far we’d get.
As Lance Armstrong was winning his fourth consecutive Tour de France, I labored up the steep talus below the Loft. I was somewhat thankful that Homie wasn’t with me today. He would surely put me into difficulty and I’d soon be off the back, as Paul Sherwin would say. I wasn’t feeling really strong today, but kept a steady pace.
We caught a couple near the top of the Loft gully – just where it cliffs out. They looked a bit concerned about the 3rd class climbing that led left around this wall. Either the terrain or the weather turned them around. Just before the summit of Meeker, another party passed us descending from the summit. They weren’t very talkative and we’d pass them numerous times throughout the day.
Photo 1: Mt. Meeker from Longs Peak.
We topped out on Meeker in just 2h40m. We were quite pleased with our pace. In Gerry Roach’s book he mentions that the Grand Slam has been done in ten hours. I figured that would be our pace. The fastest time that I know of is by Darrin Eisman. He isn’t sure how long he took (his logs were packed away), but he made the top of Storm (with just Lady Washington to go) in 5h45m. It is roughly two hours from there back to the trailhead at that pace, so I’ll called it 7h45m until further information is uncovered.
We caught the Meeker Boys by the time we got back to the Loft (the saddle between Meeker and Longs). It also started to snow here and we thought the day might be over. The storm moved in fast and passed us just as quickly. We probably only stopped for five minutes. Things were looking better, so we continued.
We got far ahead of the Meeker Boys on the 4th class terrain down to the Keplinger Couloir. After we passed the Meeker boys they separated and one of them poured on the speed to keep up with us. At which point I determined this would not happen and accordingly we poured on the speed. A few minutes later and after starting the climb towards the homestretch, we could see him leaning against a boulder near the Keplinger couloir resting, having given up on the chase...
It was another thousand feet of climbing up to the top of Longs from our low point. I made the summit of Longs 3h37 minutes after leaving the trailhead and War n’ arrived just ten minutes later. I had finally climbed Longs in combination with another peak.
Photo 2: Longs Peak from Storm Peak
We took a fifteen-minute break on the summit of Longs to sign the register, eat, and relax. The Meeker boys were heading up the Homestretch as we headed down. We continued to down the Keyhole route until the Narrows. There, instead of going across the Narrows, we headed down to the left a bit to get by the cliff below the Narrows and then traversed right and down, heading for Pagoda. We were a bit surprised to get to a steep cliff before reaching the saddle between the peaks. After some investigation we found a way down a very steep wall that consisted of highly featured, very solid rock. It provided the best scrambling of the day. This was definitely at least 4th class and I couldn’t see anyway around it. The cliff is steeper and longer in all other locations.
Photo 3: War n' Peace descending the steep headwall
We dropped down to saddle and then scrambled up big, solid talus to the summit of Pagoda – my first new summit of the day. We took another short break on this summit, mainly for some photos. We were shocked on our descent to see another climber working his way up to us. He was also out to do the Grand Slam! We wouldn’t see him again and I have my doubts that he completed it, but either way he had a big day with at least three summits.
Photo 4: Pagoda from the Homestretch
Photo 5: Bill on the summit of Pagoda
As we trudged back up the slopes of Longs, War n’ Peace started to fade a bit. By the time we re-grouped at the top of what I thought to be our descent gully into the Keyboard of the Winds, War n’ was beat. He was in no mood to try a descent that may or may not work out. I was pretty sure this descent had to be right, but I’ll admit that it looked a bit dodgy. The only alternative was to reverse our path clear up to the Narrows – a big climb of four hundred additional feet. War n’ could not be swayed and I didn’t want to push too hard in case I was wrong. We agreed to split up and meet back at the Keyhole in an hour.
I descended the gully and then climbed up the right side of a tower in hopes that it led to the traverse over to the bottom of the Trough on the Keyhole route. Sure enough, it did. In ten minutes I was on the Keyhole route and traversing towards the Keyhole itself. In twenty minutes I was at the Keyhole and that included a detour to the False Keyhole. I was intent on passing a couple of strong hikers in front of me. In fact, I was so intent that I failed to realize that they were off route and climbing to the False Keyhole. Then I arrived there and read the sign: “Do Not Descend the False Keyhole!” Dang. I scurried down the steep slabs back to the marked Keyhole route and then over to the Keyhole itself.
Photo 6: The Keyhole. War n' Peace is in the middle right of this photo.
Since I was forty minutes early, I wanted to make good use of the time. I scampered over to the summit of Storm Peak in another twenty minutes, crossing on intermediate summit along the way. I found and signed into the register and then made my way back. I didn’t climb directly back to the Keyhole, hoping that I could flag War n’ down, but I didn’t climb down to the Boulder Field camp either. I got below the Keyhole a little before an hour had elapsed since I had left War n’. I yelled up towards the Keyhole for him and heard a response – apparently he had just arrived at the Keyhole. I thought I saw him moving down towards me and I climbed up to meet him.
Photo 7: The Keyhole on the left and Storm Peak on the right, as storm clouds build above.
After awhile I realized the person descending was not War n’ and I called again. Once again I heard a response and figured he was descending, but then didn’t see him. A third call established communication. He responded, “Where are you?” Apparently the echoes were making it impossible to determine my location. “Down here!” I responded. I then saw him peek out of the little stone house and started descending towards me.
War n’ had had enough for today and was headed down. I wanted to complete the Slam and we agreed to meet at the car. I hustled over to Mt. Lady Washington as another storm was moving in. As I neared the summit, some lightning hit, but it was pretty far away. Still, this provided some extra motivation to tag the summit quick and get down. I didn’t locate a summit register on the top of this peak, despite searching both summits. I didn’t search long, though, as the storm had me worried. I did take a number of cool photos of the Diamond.
Photo 8: The East Face of Longs Peak from Mt. Lady Washington
I descended from the summit directly to the Chasm Cut-off trail junction. This two thousand foot descent was very hard on my knees. I knew if I ran the trail out to the car I could break nine hours for the roundtrip, but my knees were saying no. As I got the junction, up walks War n’. We had arrived at exactly the same time! War n’ was held up for fifteen minutes in the Boulder Field by rangers. They didn’t want anyone moving down the trail as they had a rescue helicopter coming in to remove an injured hiker from the Keyhole. Eventually, with the storm building, War n’ just up and left. It was stupid to stay in such an exposed spot with nothing happening. If the helicopter was near by or even in sight, he would have stayed.
We changed out of our tights and pile sweaters, which we had been wearing all day, and into shorts and short sleeves. As we started down the trail my knees felt fine and we started a very slow run. I urged War n’ to the front so that he could protect me down the trail until I was within reach of the stage victory, I mean within reach of the nine-hour barrier. We maintained a slow and comfortable pace and continued trotting all the way to the car. War n’ had a few cramping issues with his hamstrings and we stopped and walked them out a few times. I have experience with cramps and they aren’t fun.
We hit the parking lot after 8 hours and 55 minutes on the go. What a great loop!
