Top o’ the world to you

Top of Colorado, anyway.

View from Longs Peak, yesterday:

View from Longs Peak, September 2, 2013; 14,259 ft. Photo by Xiang Li.

Xiang Li and James Darrell summited the mountain yesterday, a bit tougher climb than they had expected.  No view like that comes without some great effort somewhere.  They topped Grays Peak a couple of weeks ago — a slightly higher mountain (20 feet), but an easier climb.

Long’s Peak is the highest point in Rocky Mountain National Park.

Longs Peak is one of the 54 mountains with summits over 14,000 feet in Colorado.^[3] It can be prominently seen from Longmont, Colorado, as well as from the rest of the Colorado Front Range. It is named after Major Stephen Long, who explored the area in the 1820s. Longs Peak is one of the most prominent mountains in Colorado, rising nearly 10,000 feet above the western edge of the Great Plains.

More:

• Longs Peak Webcam
• NPS – Long’s Peak via the Keyhole Route
• UNC Professor Performs Cello On Longs Peak (denver.cbslocal.com)
• New fall, rescue delay body recovery on Longs Peak (denverpost.com)
• Advice to climbers:  Michael Silverman’s account, with photos of the climb

Women to match our mountains: Women at Work, Parts 1 and 2

I do love the tops of mountains, and I wish I could climb them.  Fortunately, there are cameras, people who know how to use them, and people who know how to edit film to tell a story, and put us all in awe.

Plus, living among us are people brave enough and skilled enough to get to the tops of those mountains, people who make the filming possible and worthwhile.

“Women at Work” is a film of a climb by “the Cirque Ladies 2010,” described by Emily Stifler:

In summer 2010, Lorna Illingworth, Madaleine Sorkin and I spent 25 days in the Cirque of the Unclimbables, Northwest Territories, Canada. Our goal was to free climb the entire 1963 Original Route on the sheer 2000′ Southeast Face of Proboscis, and grants from the American Alpine Club encouraged us to document the adventure. The result: Women at Work (VI 5.12 R).

Cirque of the Unclimbables?  Okay, I’ll watch.

Part 1

Part 2

More: 

• Cirque Ladies 2010 blog
• SummitPost.org points out this is one of the most remote parts of the world, even with a satellite phone; also great photos and “how to get there”
• You can take a tour to look at the base of the tors, for just over $9,000 USD; bring your own climbing gear
• Bivouac.com’s review
• Geography:  Off the Nahanni River, now in the expanded Nahanni National Park, in the Northwest Territories near the border with the Yukon Territory — see maps below.
• Kluane Airways information on how to fly to the mountains to do the climb, with price lists and options

Half the fun is getting there:  Camp in shelters made by Mother Nature:

Camping under large boulder in Fairy Meadows, Cirque of the Unclimbables - SummitPost.org - "Nice roof," one wag commented

Map of Cirque of the Unclimbables, from Nahanni.com; those dots are not settlements

 

Map to Cirque of the Unbclimbables and area, from BlackFeather.com, a tour company