14, 239 ft. Longs Peak was the back drop of my first backpacking trip of the summer. 7 campers, Ally Smola and I started off day one with over 2,000ft elevation gain in 2miles. Our first test of skill was morning numero uno; time to cook pancakes. With the whisperlite (backpacking stove) lit and pancake batter mixed we realized that we were without butter or oil. Our NON non-stick pan was glareing at us as if to say "Show me yo' skills". We stepped our game up, threw a glump of peanut butter (which we justified has some 'even if a lil' bit of oil in its contents) onto the skillet but notcied it needed some help, so we added a spalsh of water to help get the oily mixture just right. We dumped a reasonable portion of batter into the slurry, and 'snap, crackle, pop' we were attempting the pancake breakfast. Simce the stove has one setting, extremly hot, we used our best judgement to try to slow cook the cakes. The heat turned the liquid batter into a quazi solid/ quazi liquid doughy ball of nasty-ness. The campers sat around critisizing our every move, although they didn't talk as much once they realized that we must now eat the rubbery pancake batter. LNT (leave no trace) is an important part of backpacking so we had to try to eat what we could to reduce our waste as much as possible. Endless amounts of chocolate chips, peanut butter, and syrup only complicated the matter. The only success that morning was that we managed to eat all of the rubbery batter even though we looked like 6 year olds that were forced to eat meatloaf mixed with their most hated medicine.

The rest of the trip went very smooth. We hiked to the keyhole, which sits about 2/3 of the way to the summit of Longs Peak at roughly 13,000ft. This provided us with one of the most beautiful views of Rocky Mountain Park that I have yet witnessed. The following day we switched campsites and stopped at Chasm Lake on the way. The lake was completely frozen over sitting at the bottom of the diamond face of Longs peak. The diamond face is a shear cliff face that rises about 3,000 vertical feet from chasm lake to the summit of Longs peak. While we were at the lake I am happy to say that Ally was fortunate enough to pull off a very rare ***** (5 star) BIF. We were lucky to have beautiful weather for the majority of the trip although it rained at our last campsite where we had to dig trenchs on the sides of our tarps to prevent our sleepbags from being flooded. As a group, our biggest challenge was fighting off the swarms of mosquitos and resisting to itch our polka dotted bodies. The trip was a huge success and a great way to start off the summer! The campers did not complain about hiking, they actually were stoked to do all of the day hikes and even wanted to do more than we had time for. Besides the pancakes the food worked out well, and we were full for every meal. 19 total miles hiked in the East side of Rocky Mountain National Park, one cool co-counselor, and 7 campers who were rockstar singers and impressive at solving riddles= two happy counselors.

Next adventure will be a whitewater float down the Colorado River.


Can't wait for Independence Day!
...and Cash (not $)