We climbed our first 14′er!

One year and nine days after moving to Colorado, Mike and I set out to climb Mt. Bierstadt - our first 14′er.

The morning started with the alarm going off at 4:30am and after a quick shower and breakfast, we set out for the Guanella Pass.   Neither of us said much on the drive up, although maybe that’s because we were still half asleep.

When we arrived at the trail head I was shocked at the number of cars that were already parked.  I know people like to start our as early as possible to avoid the afternoon storms, but I’m not sure that I could have gotten out of bed any earlier!  Although part of what slowed me down was the fact that I washed my hair.  I know most of you are thinking this is crazy, but you only climb your first 14′er once and I wanted to make sure that I my hair looked good in the pictures.

After putting on our boots, I made a pit stop at the outhouse.

My biggest fear related to climbing the mountain was having to pee behind a bush or rock.  It’s one of those silly fears where I’ve envisioned peeing on myself or falling down the hill with no pants on.  Crazy I know, but if you ask Mike it’s just part of my OCD personality that he’s learned to love.

Here’s a picture of the mountain from the parking lot.  I’ve circled the summit of Mt. Bierstadt to help give everyone a sense of how challenging this 9 1/2 mile hike is.

As we headed out on the trail, we stopped to fill out our registration form.

After we attached the registration card to Mike’s pack, we were off!  The first mile or two was relatively flat and we moved along at a steady pace.  After hopping over the river, carefully stepping on the stones and making sure not to fall in, we started to climb.

The trail was a little deceiving as it kept winding back and forth so it was hard to tell how far we had gone or how high we were.  After about an hour and a half, I started to slow down.  Typically I’m pretty good at pushing my self to keep going, but as we were jumping over rocks and avoiding the water flowing down the mountain from the snow that was still melting, I found myself stopping more often.

Here’s a picture looking West as we took one of our breaks.

At 13,000 feet we agreed to stop and have a snack and rest for a few minutes.  At this point I was wearing a long sleeve shirt, but the wind was picking up so I pulled my fleece out of my Camelback and put it on.  With only 1,060 feet to go there was no way I was giving up now!

Our next goal was to make it to ridge which we later figured out was at approximately 13,600 feet.  (Mike carries a hand held GPS with us when we hike which tracks our time moving, stopped, current elevation, etc.)  Here’s picture from the ridge.

From the parking lot the mountain looks like one big piece of rock, but upon reaching the ridge we quickly found out that we would need to scramble up the remaining distance to make it up to the top.  I removed my fleece and started up the last section of the mountain.

It didn’t take us but 15 or 20 minutes to make it to the top!

After enjoying another snack and the view for a few minutes, we decided to head back down the mountain.  We had been traveling for approximately three hours at this point and were ready to take our boots off and enjoy some lunch.

Surprising, there were plenty of people who were just hanging out on top of the mountain.

The hike back down the trail was harder than I anticipated.  Scrambling up rocks is one thing, but going down them is another.  Especially when they are wet or snow covered.

On the way down, I don’t think we stopped more than three or four times.  it’s not that I didn’t want to stop and take a break, but I knew that if I did it would be that much harder to get moving again.

If I had to guess we must have seen 200 people on the trail through out the day.  All at varying skill levels and ages.   I’m not sure how many made it to the top, but I give each and everyone of them credit for getting out there and being healthy!

When we returned to the car, Mike quickly took his boots off.  Both of us had sore feet, but little did I know that he had blisters on the backs of BOTH of his heels.  OUCH!

No having climbed a 14′er before, I wasn’t sure what to expect.  I can tell you now that it was both mentally and physically challenging.

Would I do it again?  In a heartbeat!  Only 52 more to go to climb them all.