The day started bright and early at the dino lots.  We ditched the little red civic and cruised up to Georgetown.  The road is closed about 2 miles below the standard summer Bierstadt trail head.  After about 10 minutes of talking ourselves out of the 90 degree Subaru we strapped on the snowshoes and were on our way.  The first part of Bierstadt in the Winter is an uneventful snowshoe up the road. We did not snowshoe all the way to the summer trail head.  We cut off one switchback below the summer trail head and snowshoed across the lake and eventually linked up with the standard summer route. 

All day we could see another person off in the distance.  We ended up following his snowshoe trail most of the way to the summit. Honestly I was happy to have a somewhat broken trail, I really dislike wallowing in boob deep snow!  Once we synced up with the standard route we ditched the snowshoes and went with the fast and light plan.

In my opinion once we were on the standard route it felt like a summer day on Bierstadt, maybe even a little easier.  Well the way back down is easier because you can butt slide.

The final push to the summit was a bit slippery, but we eventually made it. It is incredibly rare for Bierstadt to not have 20+ people on the summit, its honestly the 6 flags of 14ers.  We took full advantage of that and chilled on the summit, ate our snacks and chatted with the dude that broke trail for us.

After a quick photo shoot we started our butt slide back down to our snowshoes.  Once we reached our snowshoes we strapped them on and extreme snowshoed all the way back out to the car.

Its pretty hard to believe but this is the first 14er me and Kim tackled together, it only took us a year and a half!  Here’s to a summer of many more 14,000 Ft adventures!

The post Mt Bierstadt (West Ridge) *Winter* appeared first on iLikeTrails.

To start this route you will park just below the Mt Evans summit at around 13,300. See my GPX for the exact starting spot.  From this parking spot you walk a couple hundred yards to a gully that drops you down to Abyss Lake. You will link up with a trail that takes you up and around the north side of the lake once you reach the bottom of the gully.  I chose to ignore this trail and head straight across the valley over to Bierstadt’s east ridge.
Step out of car, cross mountain meadow, drop into gully, profit
Get creative, the objective is to make it to the top of that ridge!

Again there is no defined trail going up the East ridge that I could find.  Basically just take what ever your brain tells you is the path of least resistance.  I think I did a little switching back, but for the most part I just went right up the side until I gained the ridge.

In my opinion this section leaves you more exposed than some parts of the sawtooth

Once you get to the top of the ridge you will encounter a large point that take a little scrambling to get around, I chose to follow the route around the right side like 14ers.org told me to avoid the class 5 ledges. There are a few cairns to follow and the trail around the easy way is pretty obvious.
Mt Bierstadt (6 Flags) summit

The Summit of Bierstadt will be in sight the entire time you make your way across the east ridge.  I made my way up to the summit of Mt. Bierstadt, hung out in the 6 flags crowd for about 30 seconds and then began my trek over to Mt. Evans via the sawtooth.  
You must be this tall to cross the sawtooth

Route finding down to the sawtooth from Bierstadt was pretty much a free for all, there were so many different variations of the trail. Maybe I was just lost, but there were people above me and below me and none of them appeared to be on a trail. Eventually I found a well traveled trail that took me over to the west side of the sawtooth. I was expecting the sawtooth to be a lot narrower, but it is comfortably wide enough to where I did not feel like I was going to tumble off of the edge at any time. Half way across the sawtooth
Across the sawtooth

I skipped my way across the sawtooth, took some GoPro selfies and made my way the last mile or so up to the summit of Mt. Evans and back to the car.
Mt Evans Summit
I will leave you with baby goats!

If you are looking for a close to Denver 6 mile hike with a decent amount of elevation gain I highly recommend “tour de abyss”.  Even with the heavy weekend crowd I was completely alone on the east ridge of Bierstadt.

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