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Mountaineering · Longs Peak TH

Longs Peak — Keyhole Route

Distance
14.0 mi
Vertical
4,859 ft
Summit
14,259 ft
Difficulty
Very strenuous

The East Longs Peak Trail — also called the Longs Peak Trail, the Keyhole Route, or, in its highest reaches, the Shelf Trail — is the standard non-technical line to the 14,256-foot summit of Longs Peak, the only fourteener in Rocky Mountain National Park and the northernmost in…

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Longs Peak under a stack of lenticular clouds — a common signature of high westerly wind across the Continental Divide that closes the Keyhole Route for the day.
Dirkse · CC BY-SA 4.0
The Keyhole itself — the notch in the west shoulder at 13,150 feet — with the Agnes Vaille Memorial Shelter tucked into the rocks at left.
Jonathan Knowles · CC BY-SA 3.0
Profile of Longs Peak from Trail Ridge Road to the north, the flat summit plateau on the left and the vertical Diamond face dropping to Chasm Lake at center.
TheCadExpert · CC BY-SA 3.0
Building cumulus over the summit ridge on an early-autumn morning, taken from the meadows below the standard trailhead.
Mike Lewinski · CC BY 2.0

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