A Walk in the Park: Glacier Gorge Ridge Traverse, RMNP

Me heading up the north ridge of Powell. Notice McHenrys Notch in the center. 

In looking for a bigger adventure while here in Colorado I stumbled upon a route called “A Walk in the Park” on mountainproject.com. The route description was fairly vague and included summiting the 8 huge peaks surrounding the Glacier Gorge in Rocky Mountain National Park, one of the peaks being Longs Peak which is 14,259ft high. The best time that I could find online for completing it was 10hrs, 14min. Under the section entitled “Protection” (which usually gives recommendations on what size of cams and gear to bring) was stated, “Free solo. If you need a rope and a partner you can forget about it. You don’t have time to eat let alone belay”. This was perfect, as I was way overdue for a major epic and I had to do something that might impress my friends that were participating in the Wasatch 100 mile race the same weekend in Utah.

Disregard the white boxes. We took this map from somewhere else. We did the loop. 

Crappy panorama of Glacier Gorge from Storm Peak.

I talked Brody Hatch, who was preparing for his first trail marathon and is a stellar climber, into giving it a shot and we started to do a bit of online beta searching. We found a few trip reports and some decent topographical maps. We just planned to figure it out as we went beyond that.

After spending much of Saturday in my horrible Denver extended stay hotel studying Foot & Ankle International, an academic journal, I took off to meet Brody up near RMNP. We cooked dinner and slept in our cars to try and get some rest before our 3:30am alarms went off.

Getting ready to hit the trail at 4:30am. 

We hit the trail at 4:30am running at the Glacier Gorge TH. The first 2.5miles up to Mills Lake is on a well-marked and traveled trail. Arriving at Mills around 5:05am we bailed off into the woods in the dark scrambling up the base of our first peak, Thatchtop (12,668ft). The lower half of the climb provided interesting 4^th and low 5^th class climbing intermingled with ramps with trees and vegetation. We got lucky and pulled a semi direct route up to the never ending boulder field that took us to the top. I reached the top in 2:02 and watched the sunrise. 

Once Brody caught up we headed down the saddle and up the north ridge of Powell Peak (13,208ft). The ridge was absolutely stunning, having a knife edge with a vertical drop down into the gorge to the east and an uncomfortably sloping slab to the west. Climbing this during the morning “golden hour” provided some amazing photographs.

North ridge of Powell Peak.

Summit of Thatchtop.

North ridge of Powell Peak, Brody.

North ridge of Powell Peak, Brody.

Summit of Powell Peak.

The next objective was McHenry Peak (13327ft). The difficulty of this was getting past McHenry’s Notch which is a couple hundred foot notch in the ridgeline. To get down into the notch we had to make the decision to climb down the north or south side blindly, because we didn’t have any beta on which was better. We picked north and ended up on multiple thin dead-end wet moss covered ramps. Because there was moisture and vegetation occasional rocks were loose making it a bit too spicy for comfort. We both ended up climbing up different routes of 5^th class to a ledge where we could access the south side and made it down into the notch safely. Climbing up the east side was much more straightforward 4^th/5^th class climbing and we made it out and along to the summit of McHenry.

Chiefs Head Peak (13579ft) followed which required us to drop down about 1,000ft into Storm Pass.  This consisted of mainly uneventful boulder hopping and we eventually topped out. Here we were able to rehydrate some by sucking water from small puddles that accumulated on the larger boulders from recent storms.

Brody lapping up water on top of McHenry Peak, not praying.

The crux section (most difficult) came next up to Pagoda Mountain (13497ft). Pagoda’s west ridge was extremely narrow with areas that we deemed unclimbable for free soloing. This forced us to work our way up the north side of the mountain where we encountered multiple lower 5^th class sections and were eventually forced to drop down a wide ramp and ascend up a climbable gully. While headed up the gully I was on the lookout for bivy spots, having seen the looming storm clouds coming from the south before dropping off the ridge putting them out of view. It started to lightly rain as we regained the ridge and eventually the summit.

Me heading up Pagoda's west ridge.

Free solo Pagoda. 

Longs Peak (14,259ft) was next in line and required us to pass through the Keyboard of the Winds (some cool towers) and up to link into the south section of The Keyhole Route (most popular route) of Longs. Just below the route the weather turned bad and we found ourselves caught in a hail/rain storm. We found a large rock to sit under and waited it out for about 15 minutes. Travel after this storm was slow going due to everything being wet making it uber slippery. Our original plan had been to summit Longs and descend down the 5.4 Cable Route on the north side but we bailed on that idea due to conditions, fatigue and time. It was getting rather late and we had a long way to go still.  We headed down the Keyhole route following the red and yellow dots on the rocks marking the trail. It was slow going and frustrating because every step was slippery.

Sitting out the hail storm on Longs Peak.

From the actual Keyhole section on the northwest side of Longs we only had a small climb up a boulder field to Storm Mountain (13,326ft) and then a huge seemingly never ending decent down a boulder field to Half Mountain (11,482ft). Once on top of Half Mountain some beta that we had in our heads told us to descend a talus filled gully on the northwest side, easy enough. It was getting dark as we descended. The decent had some somewhat sketchy down climbing due to the moisture and loose rock but we continued until it was completely dark and we realized that we were surrounded on three sides by cliffs. Our only logical option was to turn around and climb back up the same section that had just taken us about an hour to cautiously descend. After multiple angry words were released we trudged on worked our way back up to the top and ended up descending down the north side through a fawna filled boulder field that took forever to work through. We eventually made it down to a trail and made the trek back to the car. My GPS watch had died at around 16hrs and we ended up reaching the car 18hrs and 48 minutes after leaving. The drive home was BRUTAL because I was so tired but I had to be in surgery the next morning to observe and had to make it home.

Brody coming out of the Keyhole of Longs.

Never-ending boulder field of Storm Mountain and Half Mountain.

 This was an awesome achievement! Brody did awesome. Multiple times we had to just keep it cool and focused to make it through. Looking back at it I might try it again someday, being a little bit more prepared in an attempt to beat the 10hr 14min record. Only time will tell.

Final Statistics

• 7 Summits (we were only a few hundred feet away from getting Longs Peak which would have been 8)
•  Distance Traveled: Approx. 18 miles
• Vertical Climbed: Approx. 9,000ft
•  C2C Time: 18:48