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| Bierstadt - Sawtooth - Evans |
A bit of washboard on the way up to Guanella Pass (south side as the north side is closed) otherwise the road is in great shape.
Bierstadt
practically no snow across the willows
little snow up as far as the shoulder
hard packed patches of snow up to the ridge
mostly snow free to the summit
we had boots on but I imagine you could do it in sneakers if you really wanted to.
So far so good.
Sawtooth.
Take an ice axe. You may also want crampons.
The first 200' down has snow but presents little or no problems.
We glissaded down the south side and traversed exposed rocks to the first notch although the snow was very soft.
Getting up to the second notch is more problematic as there is still a lot thigh deep soft snow in the gullies sometimes with ice underneath. You can tell this by the deep trough made by yours truly.
Stay on the rocks as much as possible even is it's slightly off route. I certainly had a few brown trouser moments, given the possibility of a wet slide in this terrain.
Once through the notch there are patches of snow and ice interspersed between the scree and rocks, definitely a toss up whether it's better to have crampons or not.
The traverse took us a long time ( ~2hrs ) due to slow going in the snow.
Evans
For the traverse to Evans there are passages on snow which I would recommend having an ice axe for.
The descent back to Guanella Pass is only made hard by the deep soft snow covering the rocks in the gully, although we did get a couple of good glissades. We stayed on the north side of the stream until fairly far down as it all looked to boggy for words on the south side.
Photos to follow.
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