40 NORTHERN COLORADO ICONS: Longs Peak

At 14,255 feet above sea level, Longs Peak is the tallest mountain in Northern Colorado; one of the most climbed, too.

"From an icon standpoint, it's obvious why it got that way," said Walt Borneman, who wrote a climber's guide to Colorado's peaks over 14,000 feet, or fourteeners. "Just about

Longs Peak, the only fourteener in Rocky Mountain National Park, got its name nearly two centuries ago, when the first U.S. expedition under Major Stephen Long was mapping the South Platte River in 1820. For the next 50 years, it was one of those peaks considered unclimbable.

"Probably because of the east face," Borneman said. "When you climb Longs you have to go around it to climb it."

Although the first recorded ascent was made by Grand Canyon explorer John Wesley Powell in 1868, its 175 routes to the summit have been climbed thousands, maybe millions, of times since. A 2003 Colorado State University study estimated that 26,000 people try to reach the summit annually and 10,000 of them make it.