The Arapahoe Indians, who lived in the valleys below the peak, named it Nesotaieux or "Two Guides" for the double summits of Longs Peak and Mount Meeker. French fur trappers called it Les Deux Oreilles or "Two Ears." Although a couple parties claimed to have climbed Longs Peak, the first verifiable ascent (not including previous Native American ascents) was by a party of seven in 1868. The main impetus for the ascent came from Major John Wesley Powell, the one-armed explorer who made the first descent of the Green and Colorado Rivers, and William N. Byers, founder and editor of the Rocky Mountain News. The other climbers were Jack Sumner, W.H. Powell, and three colleges students-L.W. Keplinger, Samuel Garman, and Ned E. Farrell. The first climb on the East Face of Longs Peak was by Reverend Elkanah J. Lamb in 1871. After climbing the Keyhole Route, Lamb descended the face via the Notch Couloir and then down a snow gully that was aptly called Lamb's Slide. In 1873 the first three women climbed Longs Peak. Addie Alexander in August; Anna Dickinson in September; and in late September, Isabella Bird, an English woman who wrote a detailed account of her ascent in A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains. Enos Mills, a naturalist, climber, and father of Rocky Mountain National Park, led many groups to the summit of Longs from his Longs Peak Inn. He climbed the mountain 297 times, including 32 ascents in August 1906. "Climbing a high peak occasionally," wrote Mills, "will not only postpone death but will give continuous intensity to the joy of living." Taken from the Longs Peak Web Site