Longs – Trough (Failed)

My first attempt on Longs was flawed from the beginning. I got food poisoning on Tuesday and have no been able to eat a single meal until Friday; we were supposed to leave on Saturday. On Friday morning, still feeling terrible, I sent an email to everyone I was supposed to go with that I was out. As Friday went on, I started feeling better, and dumber, so I decided I was back in. Hastily packed by backpack with that “I know I forgot to take something”  feeling and turned in for our early Saturday departure.

I woke up Saturday feeling OK and forced down some breakfast. By the time we reached the ranger station at RMNP, I started feeling sick again and all that food I was trying to keep down from the last 24 hours all came out. Suddenly I was feeling ligh headed, nauceous and weak again like I did that whole week. Oh shit. At this point, the smart thing would have been to head back to Denver, but I did not drive myself and I did not want to ruin the trip for the people who gave me a ride, so I just decided to hedge my bets on me getting better as the trip went on. By the time we got to the trailhead and put our 40-50lb packs on, I was feeling better, but still thinking what the hell was I doing. Somehow I was able to keep up with the group for the most part and we made it to Black Lake in around 5 hours without too many major obstacles. The melting snow did make it quite interesting in places when we had to cross streams. We set up camp that evening preparing for some wind and maybe a light snow shower as was forecast fully expecting to be climbing the next morning. I was able to force half a Mountain House meal down and some Gu gel hoping to get some calaroies back into me and headed off to sleep.

Around 10pm, I was hearing snow on the tent and thought to myself “oh cool, I’ll see how this tent performs in a bit of snow” and dozed off again. I woke up 2 hours later now with very obvious shadows on the tent canopy and around the vestibule, snow must have piled up. I shook it off the tent from inside and went back to sleep thinking that was the last snow I’d see. Dawn woke me up to the sides of the tent under obvious stress… I didn’t remember this much snow last night. Farther inspecition revealed around 8 inches of wet heavy snow. We had to quite literally dig out tents out with shovels. One of the tents collapsed under the weight, the rest just needed a bit of maintenance to get all the snow off.

The heavy snow kept falling in buckets and this is when I remembered what I had forgotten: my shell. I was terrified that if the snow did not stop, I would get soaked through. This is the absolute worst thing to forget. I made the best with my softshell and down jacket during breakfast and breaking camp. In about an hour, both got soaked through. And then, true to Colorado weather traditions, just as quickly as it came, the snow dissapeared just to be replaced by the warm sun. The temperature immediately rose to over 45 degrees. Obviously, with around 8 inches of fresh heavy snow on top of an ice layer meant high avalanche danger in the Trough and we decided it that it would not be safe to climb. By the time we were leaving camp, we were down to our baselayer and with sunglasses on. We made it back down to the Glacier Gorge parking lot in 2 hours.

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