Even More Adrenaline: Do you have a cell phone or a radio ?


One of my original warm-up ideas was to climb Mt Meeker via the Loft. After the adventure of the previous day I felt we should stick to the less ambitious original plan. If the weather was decent, maybe we could go up to the summit of Longs instead. We applied this plan, but got a fairly late start. I crossed a couple of snowfields on the way up to the Loft, to rebuild my courage regarding snowfields :) Towards the top of the Loft couloir there is a rock band ; here the class 3 route veers left on a ledge. We stopped to grab a bite and talked to two hikers who were turning back, not having found the way. Since they were considering going to the right basically directly up the couloir, but we knew the trail was going to the left, I proposed they join us. Shortly thereafter we were up on the Loft (must have been 11:30 or 12). Me and Victor stopped again at the "shelter" on the Loft, but the two hikers, actually a man and a woman, kept going towards Longs Peak.

It was still sunny, but quite windy. Even if it was kind of late, we decided to go for the summit of Longs. The hail hadn't lasted that long the day before, and we were on a class 3 route after all. After the Loft, the route winds its way along the west side of Longs Peak, before ascending towards the summit. The route is not that clear, the one good marker being Clark's Arrow, except you only see this arrow when descending from the summit. Predictably, the two hikers did not find the way, and ended up following us. At a certain point, Victor made a couple of more difficult steps, and I yelled back at the hikers that a 5.2 move was coming up. They must have decided to turn back at that point, because although we waited for them and I went back to make sure things were OK, we didn't hear anything else. Pretty soon we found Clark's Arrow, and started ascending towards the summit.

The hail came, our Gore-Tex went on, and we were undeterred until lightning began to strike all around. Not cool at all. Even if none of the bolts was closer than half a mile from us, there sure were a lot of them. Walking around with an ice axe on my backpack was getting really spooky. We found a rock that offered some shelter, ditched the ice axes and decided to wait it out. Based on the day before, it shouldn't last very long. We must have been about 500 feet below the summit, and pretty close to the Keyhole route.

Turned out not only did the storm not stop, but it was getting worse. Victor was concerned that all the rocks would get covered with ice, which he deemed to be a greater danger than the lightning. As scared as I was of the lightning, I deferred to his judgment (he had both more experience and a cooler head at the moment) ; since we did not know the Keyhole route, and said route was longer anyways, we opted for a descending the way we came. As the lightning was not letting up, I panicked a bit, and while trying to descend very quickly I overshot the way we had come up. I got back on track, and we negotiated the rest of the descent to the Loft (basically scrambling over wet, snowy rocks) while the thunder and lightning were gradually fading away. We saw the rescue helicopter overhead ; when we got to the Loft, I was pretty winded. Even through there was no more lightning, it was still raining, and it was very cold and windy. We went over the Loft, found the descent towards the Loft couloir fairly easily considering the fog, and kept going down. As we lost more altitude, the sun came out, and my headache started to evaporate.

After the storm on the way down from the Loft. The buttresses on Mt Meeker are in the background>

No sight of the two hikers. We went down further, and I reluctantly waited for Victor who wanted to explore a "shortcut" over the Ship's Prow (some sketchy looking gully that was blocked by a rock step midway up). After he gave up on the shortcut, we were just about to start heading down, when we heard two faint cries for help, from somewhere up towards the Loft. Victor packed all our extra clothes and food and went back up to look for whoever it was. I went down to get help ; it is really amazing what motivation can do, half an hour before I had been moving very, very slowly and now I was running down the mountain. I passed by several parties after going by the ranger cabin below Chasm Lake, but no one had a cell phone or a radio. At the junction with the main trail to Longs Peak, I ran into a party of park rangers and told them the story.

They were all up there to do a rescue on the Keyhole route. None of them had binoculars ... so we couldn't asses the situation, and Mike, a rescue volunteer who had come up with the park rangers, joined me on the way back to Chasm Lake. There were binoculars in the ranger cabin, and we did see that Victor had reached two people close to the rock band below the Loft. Mike grabbed a rope from the ranger cabin, and since he professed that he had no climbing experience, I went back up with him.

The good part of the story was happening up there, and it shall remain untold, unless the main actors wish to contribute. When Victor reached them, the two hikers had gotten off route, tried to descend over some difficult terrain (missing the ledge that was leading back to the Loft couloir), got stuck, were hypothermic and rather disoriented. He reached them, got them a little bit more warm and energized, and most important, he got them moving. When I saw all three of them moving across the said ledge, I let Mike continue up, and slowly headed back to our camp. I stopped frequently, gazing at the sunset, mellowing out after all the running around that had gone on that day, and anticipating the delicious dinner that I was planning to have ready by the time Victor made it back.

Alas, that was not to be. Rain came again, I got soaked while moving our stuff to the rainproof bivy cave, which was already occupied by two Boulder climbers ; they were going to attempt the Casual route on the Diamond the following day. A tarp would have been very nice ... Victor came back all soaked as well ; he had walked with the two hikers down to the junction with the main trail ; they looked like they could continue on their own (they probably made it below tree line before the rain started). We spent a rather uncomfortable night. At 4:45 AM, Ben and Ben took off, and we moved to their more comfortable sleeping spots.

Sunrise at Chasm Lake

We finished the rest of our food, packed up and thinking we had had enough excitement for a while, we headed down. A few minutes later, as we were trudging through the boulders alongside Chasm Lake, Ben catches up with us, with his harness still on, and pops the familiar question : "Do you have a cell phone or a radio ?" A climber had pulled a huge block while going up the North Chimney, smashing his ankle and narrowly missing his partner. Ben and Ben were doing the rescue, along with some other climbers (a party of three was going to climb Kieners that day). It looked like they had things under control, and one rescue was probably enough for us (neither me nor Victor had that much zip after the day before). We waited at the junction with the main trail until Ben actually found a hiker with a cell phone and got the park service to send the helicopter up to Mills Glacier, then got on our way. We'll definitely be back some day.