early in the morning… as in 1:30 a.m. {yikes} a group of us rolled out of bed and put our hiking shoes on and headed out the door to tackle Longs Peak… ranked 15th in difficulty among all the 14ers in colorado.
15 miles round trip.

now, i should preface that for some strange reason, chris and i thought that this hike would be comparable to the mt. of the holy cross hike we did a couple years back.  need i only say  — there really was no comparison!  this was, by far, the most difficult hike either one of us has ever done.

we were a little over 3 hours into our hike as the sun was coming up…

and this was the ascent that still awaited us…

{photo, courtesy of allyn w.}

by about 6:45a.m., we had reached what is commonly called “the key hole”

now all that lied ahead were the narrows {or what i refer to as the scary, steep sections of the hike} and the troughs. ha.

 

this was definitely the scariest part of the hike {at least going up, heading back wasn’t too bad}.
 i thought it was nice of whomever to put markings
 on the rocks so we would know where to go.

 

{photo, courtesy of allyn w.}

we’re almost there! oh, uh… no, we haven’t even gotten to the troughs yet.

{i had no idea we were going to be doing some serious bouldering}.

{photo, courtesy of allyn w.}

and the final climb to the top…

{photo, courtesy of allyn w.}

 

at 14,255 feet above sea level –

 

 

our group…

we made it to the summit at about 9:30a.m.  don’t think we would’ve made it without pete’s (guy on the far left) hilariously comedic relief. thanks pete. memories for sure.

 

craziest thing we’ve ever done… but the view was totally worth it!