The Diamond

Bring back the essay.

You should not let a few negative comments discourage your from posting you essay or any other stories/comments in the future. Some people get caught up in the not so important details. It was 5.9. No, that's only 5.8. It was this route. No, it was that route, etc, etc. In your story these were minor details, whether perfectly accurate or not. What was great about it was you conveyed the essence of the experience quite well. You thought you were well prepared, the weather forecast appeared great, all seemed well. But, instead, your hands were numb, the weather turned, and you gave some serious thought to religion. This brought me back to a similar experience that I had last summer on Spearhead. One pitch to go (runout friction), and the skies opened up with four inches of hail and snow. We stood there and shivered for 45 minutes even though we thought we were dressed properly. Then, the lightning started and so did the religious thoughts as death seemed likely. We knew we needed to move. So, we started to climb (rapping was not an option at this point), clearing snow and ice off the holds, blowing into our hands to try to regain feeling in our numb finger tips, water running down the rock splattering into our faces and crack and sizzle lightning on top of our heads. Fortunately, we survived. Three people got struck by lightning that day below us in the Glacier Gorge. How we survived, I don't know. Thanks for recounting your story.

Bring back the essay!

+1 bring it back!

Your story kept me very entertained for a while yesterday. Thanks!

A couple of years ago I had a semi-epic on Kieners as well. Nothing like yours as the weather was perfect for us and the only real danger we ere in was driving home. There were 3 of us and it was all of our first alpine route. Nothing really went wrong but everything just took forever. For one thing I am scared of heights so I made us rope up for both Broadway and upper kieners where most people un-rope and cruse. We also had trouble route finding and ended up climbing 5.9 instead of 5.5.

My partner who was leading took a really long time on the first pitch off of Broadway because we were having trouble route finding. Being scared of heights standing on Broadway for over an hour I was feeling pretty on edge. (On edge..get it) When I finally cleaned the anchor which consisted of 3 cams and 1 nut I somehow left all 3 cams behind and only took the $7 nut with me. Whoops.

We started hiking at 1am and ended up summiting at 6pm. Thanks to the weather gods for giving us a bluebird all day. We all knew better than to be up there that late but really had no choice. We were really nervous about the weather all day.

We were planning on descending the cables route but by the time we summited we were all really wiped out and sick of route finding. We decided to descend the keyhole route because we knew where it went vs. searching for the rap anchors.

That was the longest 7 miles I have ever walked. We ended up back at the car at 11pm and foolishly decided to drive home. I was literally hallucinating on the drive home. At one point I came to a complete stop because I thought that there was someone in the middle of the road flagging me down. Once I stopped I realized it was just a deer crossing sign.

Boreas wrote:Don't take any of it personally, we are all just "M.P.tards" anyways.

Jennifer, please repost it. I read it and enjoyed it plenty. It takes moxie to put your fears and foibles and perceived weaknesses into a story and then let the public read it. You've got more guts than a lot of folks to do it. Most would just hide it. You didn't, so props to you. Others could learn from such a story. And, please, ignore the negative posters, as they will always be negative. Looking forward to more of your adventures showing up on this site.

Hay there Jennifer,
I have certainly had my share of epics on Longs Peak spread over 30+ years.
I'm sorry to have missed what sounds like a heart felt passionate account of your experience.

I wish that you would repost the story.
If you do, Please don't edit it!

It doesn't really take much to be a critic!

How about some trip reports from the critical bench riders section. PLEASE BE ACCURATE to the last detail and be sure to tell us what that stuff your writing about smelled like after you stepped in it, OK?

I remember staying up real late one night writing a story for a thread on Mountain Project about a climb that I did in the Black Canyon. I hit the "Submit" box and went to bed not realizing that I hadn't Spell Checked the document!
I sure opened a can for doing that even though most of my critics had not or ever will do a wall there.
Keep sharing!