Maligning the dead as "idiots" is beyond the pale in terms of crassness and lack of sensitivity, and marks an all-time new low for this site.

It's not that I am showing disrespect for the dead. That's the last thing I intend to do.

My climbing partner & I were up at Longs this past weekend while this was all going on. We hiked up Saturday mid-day to bivy at Chasm lake to climb a route on Sunday morning. At about 1pm we hit 11k and were socked in, shortly after we past the split to the boulder field we hit the rain sleet mix and the wind picked up. Visibility dropped to about 20 feet. We reached the SAR hut shortly after where I peered at the thermometer and it was roughly 40 degrees. Neither of us had been to Longs before and following the cairns (maybe too closely) we managed to hike right past Chasm lake in the windy, rainy, sleety, socked-in conditions. After getting that sorted out (a jaunt to 12,600'), and doing some useless scouting in poor visibility we managed to get fairly chilled and grabbed some shelter in one of the little boulder caves. It took some dinner & the sleeping bags to get warmed back up. We were dressed 'relatively' appropriate with weather proof shell & pants, hats, gloves, etc and several layers of various synthetic material and still managed to get chilled. All this was about 2k directly below the summit (The Diamond between us and the summit). The conditions were definitely ripe for hypothermia at the top.

After a long night bivy with stong wind spin drifts waking me, we got up about 6am to our gear covered with snow just inside the entrance. A quick reconnaissance mission outside found several inches of snow and 40-60 mph winds. There was really no decision to be made, this wasn't the climbing conditions we were looking for so we bailed. The sun was out, but the wind was relentless all day.

Returning back to the trail head at 9,500', grabbed some lunch, discussed plans, power nap, repacked with different gear, we decided to head back up later in the day in hopes of a chance Monday morning at a different route. Just as we started, up we were quickly turned back at the TH by a ranger informing us that the summit was closed indefinitely due to extreme weather conditions. This sounded fishy and it was. After a little probing, we found out about the tradgedy. The only person to summit on Sunday morning was the park ranger who found the body, everyone else that we had met on the way down had turned at the Keyhole or earlier. Apparently, the other rangers had become fairly worried when they had lost radio contact with the lead ranger on the SAR for a couple hours. Anyway, they were hoping to get a helicopter up there, but the wind was far too strong on Sunday for that.

By Sunday night, conditions had turned almost perfect. We camped at Longs Peak campground that night, 3am start to go tackle another mountain on Monday morning. As we headed out, we couldn't resist checking to see if they had opened the mtn. back up. As we pulled into the parking lot, we were greeted by dozens of people preparing to head out for the summit via the keyhole. Closure signs were plastered everywhere, yet we saw several people depart anyway. I was really surprised not to see a ranger there.

Anyway, we headed off to our target for the day and the weather couldn't have been any better. It was amazing how hard and fast that storm came through.

I've often wondered what I would do if I had a friend that wanted to push on when I thought I wanted to turn back.

As we were racking up for a day at the Twin Owls Sunday .

Not to hijack the thread but I'm just curious about what your were racking up for at Twin Owls. I've hiked it to the top and never ran into any technical climbing. Are there crags off the trail?

[It sounds like you're thinking about the Twin Sisters. You must be one hell of a hiker if you made it up the Owls whithout encountering technical moves. :wink:

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