Mt. Bierstadt Conditions for Sunday

Colorado peak questions, condition requests and other info.
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HikerGuy
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Re: Mt. Bierstadt Conditions for Sunday

Post by HikerGuy »

goldenite wrote:E_A_Marcus_949, how were the creek crossing and the willows? I'm planning on doing Bierstadt/Evans on Sunday 09/29 and don't want to spend most of the trip with wet feet!
You can avoid the willows and keep your feet dry:

http://14ers.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f= ... ows#p93669" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
http://www.14ers.com/php14ers/triprepor ... ki=Include" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
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HuskyRunner
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Re: Mt. Bierstadt Conditions for Sunday

Post by HuskyRunner »

HikerGuy wrote:
goldenite wrote:E_A_Marcus_949, how were the creek crossing and the willows? I'm planning on doing Bierstadt/Evans on Sunday 09/29 and don't want to spend most of the trip with wet feet!
You can avoid the willows and keep your feet dry:

viewtopic.php?f=16&t=8637&p=93669&hilit=willows#p93669
http://www.14ers.com/php14ers/triprepor ... ki=Include" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Here in Evergreen we still have a small stream running through our yard from the rains the past 2 weeks, normally our yard is almost bone dry. Betting that even the 2 routes above (I have taken these alternates in the past and kept my feet mostly dry) will be wetter, perhaps much wetter, than usual. If you take the Sawtooth and finish by descending Spalding then it's only a mile or so on the end of the hike that you need to deal with mud and willows, that's not so bad. Just have a nice dry pair of socks and shoes in the car!
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thenotoriousrob
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Re: Mt. Bierstadt Conditions for Sunday

Post by thenotoriousrob »

Doing Evans tomorrow morning to gauge the amount of snow for another 14er Sat.
Never done a late September hike. I'm thinking I pretty much need to pack everything in the back of my car, including ski gear, just in case, and then assess at the TH... Hard to tell what the temps will be at the TH or even the summit though. Anyone done a hike this week yet who can give some insight? Thanks!
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goldenite
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Re: Mt. Bierstadt Conditions for Sunday

Post by goldenite »

A friend and I did Bierstadt-Sawtooth-Evans on Sat (09/28/13) and went ahead through the willows/creek crossing up to Bierstadt. The willows were iced over in the morning (around 7am), so I had dry feet until I came down from Evans taking HikerGuy's (via Jim Davies) suggestion of "going past Spalding and returning across a line of low hills most of the way across the basin" (and avoiding the gully). We came down the hills and found the trail they're talking about, but the problem was that the trail eventually opened up into a flooded basin in the willows. Not only did we have soaking feet, but we lost the trail because it was underwater. Has anyone else experienced this, or did we catch the wrong trail?

Here's the link to the alternate descent:
http://14ers.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f= ... ows#p93669" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
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Jim Davies
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Re: Mt. Bierstadt Conditions for Sunday

Post by Jim Davies »

The trail doesn't take you all the way back to the pass; you have to backtrack left and around the end of a low area, then across some hills and through another low area before reaching the Bierstadt trail just beyond the lake. It's easier to find if you followed it on the way in. The second "low area" could very well be a pond now, given the deluge of two weeks ago. Somebody said here once that there was a way to avoid it by going further back toward the Sawtooth, but I'm not familiar with that. If you go straight from the end of the trail toward your car, you'll be getting into some boggy areas, so maybe that's what happened. Or maybe there's just a lot of water right now.
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