After being home only 10 days from my Aconcagua Expedition, I was back on a plane headed for Denver to try a few winter ascents with my local hiking club. The original plan was to hit Grays and Torreys on one day and then Bierstadt and possibly Evans on another. I had already done Grays (twice) and Torreys (once) before this trip, but not in the winter. However, Bierstadt and Evans is what I needed to finish off Colorado’s Front Range 14ers but thought a summer hike would be too easy (unless The Sawtooth was involved). So my interest was piqued when someone put together a winter trip that included all four.
Unfortunately, the plan unnecessarily blew up the night before, leaving me feeling lucky to have at least bagged Bierstadt! It’s a long story that is frustrating and not really worth getting into all of the details.
Short Backstory
In short, this trip leader likes to over-analyze the forecast and other related conditions and then has a tendency to change the plan a dozen times before we even leave town. This trip was no exception.
It goes without saying that weather is always a factor to consider when climbing mountains, especially in the winter. Grays and Torreys also had some avalanche risk to mitigate as well, so that alone was understandable when another last-minute change was made to climb Bierstadt first. Fine. But as everyone began arriving at the Airbnb on Friday night, the forecast was showing a 15mph wind for Saturday (March 8th) that created another reason to change the plan for the umpteenth time.
We would now be doing Geneva Mountain, a smaller one near Bierstadt with an elevation of 12,335′.
That made no sense to me. It’s winter. We came prepared for a cold weather adventure. Had we become soft all of a sudden? Would we have backed out at home because of a little wind? No.
Yet I was being mocked for liking the cold and wanting to stick to the latest plan for Bierstadt.
I couldn’t understand why would we come all the way to Colorado for something less than a 14er. It wasn’t like the avalanche danger was high everywhere, leaving us with no other choice. I politely challenged this decision to no avail. The decision was made and that was that, no further discussion.
Unintended Divergence
I reluctantly agreed to join in on this new group plan since I was there with the group after all. It was a beautiful day and my new objective was simply to enjoy my first winter experience in Colorado, regardless of what we did. Any 14er was the anticipated goal, but I also wasn’t in charge and let it go.
With that, we departed from the winter trailhead on Guanella Pass Road at a quarter past 7am. When we reached the cutoff a half-mile up the road, our leader expressed apprehension about taking that route for fear of post-holing (remember, we had snowshoes with us… anticipating a SNOWSHOE hike).
Three of the group proceeded to follow the road. I started up the cutoff route in someone else’s bootpack and felt the snow still frozen enough to not worry about sinking in. Gil, the friend I drove up with, followed me. That one small unintended divergence turned out to be the best decision of the day.
When we reached the top of the cutoff and back on the road, we waited a few minutes for the others before deciding to keep going and just meet up at the summer trailhead. At the 1-mile mark, where the road takes another hard right, we saw tracks heading left that looked like another cutoff. So we took it.
As luck would have it, that separated us from the rest of the group and unknowingly (initially) put us on the route to Bierstadt. We went a quarter mile further and stopped to put on our snowshoes. While we waited again for the others, I looked across the valley in the direction of Geneva Mountain and said, “that is nothing more than a few bumps along the horizon. why are we wasting our time going there??”
At that point, we looked at each other and decided to split off from the group to go bag Bierstadt!
Crossing the Bottomlands
The next mile and a half after leaving the road is relatively flat as you cross the Scott Gomer Creek area. We were following someone else’s tracks that looked fresh, but didn’t see anyone else on the mountain.
Gil had done Bierstadt before, in the summer, and had a good feel for how to approach this western slope. It also didn’t seem too difficult if we had to find our own way up without those tracks ahead of us.
The weather remained comfortable as we slowly gained elevation from a pace that was very easy-going.
As we reached the top of the adjacent basin, the wind picked up a bit but nothing crazy.
It was near here where Gil decided to call it. He was struggling with a headache that wasn’t going away. As we stopped for a break, an offer was made to wait for me if I wanted to keep going. I was hesitant to separate but also knew Gil was good with it. This is the guy who waited 8 1/2 hours for us on Mt. Baker!
I pressed on knowing there was no way he would need to wait that long today. Shortly thereafter, I noticed two climbers way off in the distance. These were the tracks we had been following all morning.
Bagging Bierstadt
It wasn’t long before I got to the base of the steepest part of this climb. By now, I had caught up with the two in front of me who had ditched their snowshoes and were already climbing up the rocky face.
That didn’t seem right to me. Instead, I wandered over to the right of this steep section to what looked like a low point along the summit ridge (call it a saddle if you want). There I found a nice path to the top that felt much better… and one where I didn’t even need to take off my snowshoes (which was a bonus)!
When I reached the summit, the two who had just gotten there minutes before me were girls from the area. We snapped a few pictures of each other and didn’t stay long since it was cold, but not miserable.
Topping out in under 5 hours seemed like a decent time given our leisurely pace and how much we stopped to wait. The climb was also about 3,200′ with 2/3rds of that gained in the last mile and a half.
Uphill stats from my COROS Vertix 2X were pretty consistent.
No Sawtooth to Evans Today
I hung around for a few minutes after the girls had left to see what it would take to cross The Sawtooth.
Yeah, no. Definitely not by myself, and likely not in the winter for my first attempt across that ridge. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good knife-edge, but this one looked a tad intimidating. Not to mention the 700′ drop in elevation before climbing back up the other side… and no one else was on the mountain that day. I also knew Gil was waiting for me so that immediately quelled any thought of even trying.
Mt. Evans would have to wait.
Down and Out
The hike out was obviously quicker. It always is.
Gil saw me coming and had already started making his way down. Soon I caught up.
Final stats for the day ended up being 8.2 miles with 3,300′ of elevation in 7 hours.
Here’s a downloadable GPX map of the winter route we followed.
As for the rest of our group, they wasted a beautiful day on some obscure peak that no one cares about …and it took them almost 10 hours to do it! Gil and I were so happy with how this played out for us.
The Outcome of Indecision
Of course it would have been nice if the group all hiked together, even though I don’t think we would have ended up staying together. Each individual’s pace would have naturally spread us out a bit but at lease everyone would have been going for the same objective. …but all that indecision! It definitely had an impact on the overall outcome of the weekend whether anyone else wanted to admit that or not.
No one knew if we were coming or going and “the plan” got confusing real fast. I lost patience with it and bowed out of the last-minute conversations around re-planning which peak to do on Monday.
I brought my skis with me on this trip and decided to spend the day at Copper Mountain.
Two other people from this now-splintered group ended up doing Quandary, which would have given me another 14er. Unfortunately, Gil and I already had tickets to an Avs game based on the original plan.
All said and done, it was a successful weekend in my book. I got to ski Colorado for the first time at Winter Park on Friday, bagged Bierstadt on Saturday, skied again at Copper on Monday followed by some Chicago-style pizza at Giordano’s before watching my hometown team play the Avalanche.
Too bad they lost, 0-3.
