Mt. Bierstadt

Sunday I headed up into the Front Range of the Rockies. LambdaConf had ended the day before, so I had the whole day before me. My initial plan was to tackle the simplest 14er: Mt. Evans. There are 54 14ers in Colorado (depending on how you count them) and I wanted to climb at least one this week. My previous attempt at a 14er was Pike's Peak on a trip in February with Maxwell and Zara back in 2010. We road the cog rail train up as far as we could, but sadly we were blocked from making it to the top by snowfall. At first it looked like the day would be a repeat, as the road to Mt. Evans was closed when I got there. I looked online to check my backup plan, Mt. Bierstadt, and saw the Guanella Pass Road which led to the trail also listed as closed.

I decided to head over to Guanella Pass and see how far I could make it anyway. Never trust anything you read on the internet. The Guanella Pass Road was open! I succumbed to my characteristic giggles as I started to see snow by the road and then found myself driving next walls of it. The parking lot below Mt. Bierstadt sits a little ways over 11,000 ft. The 7.3 mile hike to the summit at 14,065 ft takes one up 2795 ft of climbing. The snow was thick on the ground, but it was about 40 degrees and I'd come this far. So I decided to make a go of it.

Some of my notes on gear:

It took about 4 hours to reach the summit, where I lunched and signed the book. I guess that makes me official! Sadly I neglected to think to bring Bier to enjoy at the top of Mount Bierstadt. Then I began the long journey down. It wasn't that long actually, and for much of it I took the smarter, less steep path marked by cairns. On the parts where it was to steep I glissaded down on my butt using the sweatshirt tied around my waist as a sled.

Coming down the mountain was not hard. At the base it was a lovely 60 degrees. Awesome until I realized that the warm weather had melted the snow on the field I had to cross to get back to the parking lot. So I postholed with my legs up to my knee or waist in snow for a 1 or 1.5 miles. It was grueling, but I just had to laugh. When I finally got back to the car I was soaked - pants, boots, shirts, all of it! Waterproof boots don't really work if you're up past your knees in slush.