The Mountain Came to Recognize It's Deep and Rocky Sides

So, I finally went hiking again last weekend after taking over 3 weeks off. And since we had that little break to let our muscles go soft, we decided to take it easy and climb a Fourteener.

A "Fourteener" is a mountain over 14,000 ft above sea level. There are 88 Fourteeners in the contiguous United States, with 54 of them residing right here in Colorado. Out of the 54 Colorado Fourteeners, we climbed #38: Mt. Bierstadt at 14,060ft.

If you are a Coloradoan, climbing a Fourteener is like losing your virginity. It is very much a bragging right around here. Some people seek to climb all 54 of them. Certifiably insane people try to climb them all during the winter. Our goal this summer was to summit at least one of them. My ultimate goal is to do Long's Peak (#15, 14,255ft), but after doing Bierstadt I don't think I'm quite ready yet. As far as Fourteeners go, Bierstadt is considered a relatively easier one to accomplish. If that's one of the easier ones, I definitely don't think I'm ready for a climb one as difficult as Long's. Someday, though, someday...

Anyway, here are some of the pics from the hike:

The first part of the trail goes through kind of a muddy swamp full of pointy willow bushes. The boardwalk pictured above is only a few years old. Before that, you had to slog your way through the marsh in ankle-deep mud while getting your thighs scraped apart by the willow branches. Old school hikers lament the boardwalk and argue that traversing the willow swamp was part of the rites of climbing Bierstadt. I, myself, was happy to have a clear trail and to not have wet slimy socks for the rest of the 7-mile hike. Call me a wuss, I guess.

Oh, that's Mt. Bierstadt on the right. Those jagged points make up the Sawtooth that leads to another Fourteener, Mt. Evans. But I'll get to that in a little bit...

After you get out of the swamp, you encounter a series of switchbacks that take you to the base of Bierstadt. You still have to deal with willows, which at times can be shoulder high. I didn't think that this part of the hike was too bad, but it definitely got me huffing and puffing.

Once you clear the willows, you get a bit of a reprieve as the path takes you through an alpine tundra and up to the real ascent. As you can see, it was a bit busy on the trail that day. However, this field was very pretty with little wildflowers growing everywhere. The air was a bit thin up here, but it was a nice, restful stretch before the trail literally shoots straight up the mountain.

After a long, hard, steady straight-up climb, the trail finally levels off a bit and provides a great resting point before hitting the final summit. There is no vegetation this high up, it is literally just a big pile of rocks. Way out in the distance you can see two other Fourteeners: Grays and Torreys. You see that road down there? That's where we parked. I am pretty high up at this point and I'm not even at the peak yet.

That's the peak. It is literally a hands & knees rock scramble up to the top from here. Don't be fooled, those rocks are big. As hard as that last bit of climbing was, I knew by this point that I was going to make it. There was no turning back now.

I hiked a little bit with that guy in the green backpack. He was cool. It was his first Fourteener, too. He had just moved here from Indiana a few months ago and wanted to get one in right away. I moved here 11 years ago and just now got one under my belt. Hey, I was acclimating to the altitude...

Here I am signing the register at the top to document that I made it. Yee-haw! Again, you can see it was a bit crowded that day which kind of took away from the "alone on the top of the world" experience, but it was still extremely cool. Unlike, say Pikes Peak, which is surrounded by a large metropolitan area, Bierstadt is completely surrounded by mountain wilderness and provided some of the best 360 degree views that I have ever seen on one of these hikes. It was absolutely breath-taking (and I'm not just talking about the altitude).

That's Mt. Evans, which is connected to Bierstadt by a ridge of rocks known as "The Sawtooth." Some inspired hikers climb along the Sawtooth over to Evans and knock out two Fourteeners in one shot. I was not that inspired. One was definitely enough for me that day. Plus, the Sawtooth is pretty technical and not to be ventured by amateurs such as myself. On a side note, though, the highest road in the US leads up to the top of Mt. Evans, so some people park a car up there, climb Bierstadt over to Evans and then drive down saving them a climb back down the mountain. For that, the Sawtooth might be worth risking. My knees absolutely hate climbing down.

Eventually I did get down, aching knees and all. It was just in time, too, as you can see our clear blue morning sky quickly turned into a dark, cloudy afternoon. On top of a 14,000 ft. mountain is definitely not where you want to be when you see storm clouds moving in. But by this point we were safely back at our vehicle, completely exhausted from the day's excursion. The mrs. said that she is definitely not interested in doing another Fourteener any time soon, especially Long's Peak which would be over twice as long and probably three times as difficult. While I'm not ready to do another one right away, I am all for getting some more under my belt. As I said, I don't think I'm ready for Long's Peak quite yet, but someday it will be mine. Oh yes, someday it will be mine.