"Sometimes you've gotta voice your opinions, or you're better off dead." --Nothingface - Murder is Masturbation

Mt. Bierstadt and Mt. Evans via the Sawtooth Ridge
07-16-2005
Elevation Gain: 3900
Trip Distance:  9.5 miles
Total Round-Trip Climb Time (including 15 minutes on summit): 8 hours
4WD Required:  no
Exhaustion Factor (on scale of 1-10): 7
Scenery Factor (on scale of 1-10): 7

On Saturday, July 16, 2005, Jacob and I decided to climb Mt. Evans and Mt. Bierstadt.  There's several routes for Mt. Evans, and only one that I know of to Bierstadt.  They are mostly green (easy) 14ers but we were up for a challenge so decided to go for the "blue diamond"-ish Sawtooth route.  This route is a much more difficult and time-consuming trip than the standard route, and it involves some free-climbing and some exposure to large drop-offs.  Just to say this ... since climbing Long's Peak 2 years ago, my fear of heights has improved, I wasn't once nervous of the heights ... even while travesing on snow, sitting on a "tooth", and hiking next to exposed drop-offs.  I was quite shocked of that.

Anyways, I took off from my place around 4:30am and got to Jacob's around 5:00.  We made the drive up to Georgetown and found the Guanella Pass road ... after a run-in with a traffic light on a dirt road, we were able to get to the trailhead and begin the hike/climb right at 6:30.  The trail starts out quite easy.  There's a boardwalk through the marshy area that is surrounded by willows.  Pretty soon it gets relatively steep but not a difficult climb.  I just took it slowly but never stopped to rest until I hit the summit.  The last few hundred feet or so is a scramble up some rocks, but other than that it's a fairly uneventful and simple hike.  Don't get me wrong -- your legs will be sore as it's still steep and you just climbed 2500 feet or so in 2 hours ... but we reached the summit at exactly 8:30 ... a 2 hour summit.

After spending about 10 minutes on the summit and taking summit photos and collecting the summit rock, we headed to the Sawtooth.  Of the 30 or so people on the Bierstadt Summit, nobody had yet begun the venture across Sawtooth.  It turns out only about 10% of the people even attempt this (I made that estimate up, but I bet it's fairly accurate).  So Jacob and I were on our way.  The summit of Mt. Evans is about 1/2 mile away as the crow flies, but it takes quite a bit longer.  The descent to the traverse took us about an hour then it took another hour to traverse some snow, find a trail, climb the Sawtooth, and exit into the Tundra.  From here exhaustion set in for me, I was beat.  Jacob and the other guys we met on the Sawtooth pulled ahead of me quite a ways, but I continued on the east ridge of Evans, just below several of the false summits.  After another hour of  hiking, climbing, and scrambling (much more work than I expected from this point), we arrived at the summit of Evans.  That place sucks.  There's about 300 people there hogging up the Summit and they all fucking drove there.  I'm standing there all exhaused and then some little girl in flip-flops walks by.  Kind of annoying. 

Had a sandwich at the summit, realized I was out of water, and started the decent.  Wow, the decent is scenic as hell but it is awful.  It took us 3 hours to get down.  You go about an hour without descending more than a couple hundred feet.... then you just drop ... i bet it's about an 8 or 12% grade, ridiculous.  Then you get down near tree-line and the willows return.  Not much of a trail, you just go through 6-7' high willows with mud at your feet, not too fun.  3 hours later we made it to the car and drove home.   2 hours to Bierstadt, 3 hours from Bierstadt to Evans via the Sawtooth, and 3 hours down ..... an 8 hour hike, 2 more 14ers done, and a sunburnt neck.  As Quagmire would say, "Giggidy giggidy goo."

Here are my pictures from this trip

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