Mt. Blue Sky

Route: Tour de Abyss with Mt. Bierstadt - West Slopes
Posted On: 6/22/2025, By: rmcpherson
Info: We climbed the Tour de Abyss clockwise via Bierstadt from Guanella pass. 14 miles, 5900 feet, 12 hours (5AM-5PM), 3 14ers. Perfect weather for a long day, with no risk of storms. As far as snow, there is zero unavoidable snow on the entire route, including both the eastern ridge of Bierstadt and the Sawtooth. We brought spikes but did not use them. We did walk over a couple hard snow patches on the Sawtooth but they could be easily circumvented too. On the Tour de Abyss Route itself: starting from Bierstadt, by far the toughest section of the Tour de Abyss loop is not the Sawtooth but the segment between Mt. Blue Sky and the summit of Bierstadt. Descending the gully from Mt. Blue Sky down toward abyss lake, so briefly mentioned in the route description, is a sea of loose choss and scree. There is no trail to speak of between Blue Sky and Bierstadt. We saw a total of 4-5 cairns on that entire section of route so route finding, especially while scrambling on the East Ridge, is more involved than on the generously-cairned Sawtooth. It turned out to be a perfect, if long, day that involved nearly all types of 14er travel: 1. Engineered trails the size of small roads, supporting tens of thousands of feet per year on the ascent from Guanella pass. 2. Class 3 ridge scrambling on both Bierstadt East Ridge and the Sawtooth. 3. Loose, steep gully descent full of unstable talus and rivers of scree to drop down into the Abyss. 4. An abundance of talus hopping. 5. Fording a stream and boggy wetlands to cross Lake Fork below Abyss Lake by hopping on rocks and tufts of grass. 6. Almost no willow-whacking, happily. 

Route: West Ridge from Guanella Pass
Posted On: 6/22/2025, By: samenos
Info: Willows are in pretty good shape if you stick to the trail. There are some places where you have to navigate around mud but it’s not terrible. No slow at all in the gully. Couple of snowfields on the ridge but they are very small and can be bypassed easily. Only saw 2 other people on a Friday, but many marmots :) 

Route: West Ridge from Echo Lake
Posted On: 6/20/2025, By: Myankelshurt
Info: Trail is perfect up until around 13,200 Lost it a bunch due to snow fields. Went up and down and all around. But it is passable, will just take you much longer. Over all wonderful day for a hike! We saw a moose calf about 3 miles from the trailhead. Started at 7:30 back to the car by 3:30. 

Route: Bierstadt, Sawtooth, Blue Sky
Posted On: 6/15/2025, By: bschiff
Info: Mt Blue Sky ridge is covered in snow still, lot of post holing. Sawtooth was in great shape. Would anticipate an extra hour for the blue sky ridge. Gully on the way down has a river going through it but is clear. Willows were solid enough, stay on the trail it makes it much easier! 

Route: West Ridge from Guanella Pass
Posted On: 5/24/2025, By: katiejacksons
Info: 1) trailhead to bierstadt/blue sky trail junction: wonderful conditions. A bit wet, a bit muddy, but no traction or snowshoes needed. Trailhead is open and road is plowed. Toilets are filled with snow. 2) the willows: fine before sunrise, but snowshoes were a huge help on the way back to the car. A bit of a choose your own route– just get to the base of the gully 3) the gully: not as steep as it looks from the trailhead. Wonderfully wide and over before you know it. Put spikes on here and think they were necessary. Got significantly less steep around 13,100. Mostly stayed in the center of the gully because snow was easier than the rock. Ridge crest: fairly steep traverse. Recommend ice axe + spikes. Watch for wet slides. Conditions were perfect and snow was consolidated, but more snow forecasted this week so take with a grain of salt. 

Route: West Ridge from Guanella Pass
Posted On: 5/18/2025, By: notidealbutfine
Info: Guanella Pass opens 5/24/25 so I wanted to bag this one before the swarms invade. Started at 4am from the northern winter gate closure, about 1.8 miles down from the summer trailhead. Road is dry to the trailhead. Continuous snow from TH to the Blue Sky west ridge, though I never had to bust the snowshoes out all day. I opted not to ski today, though in hindsight, it would have been worth it, despite the flat skin out on the way back from the couloir to the TH and no skiing on the road. Used mountaineering boots + spikes the entire day with the exception of the road walk. Summited at 8:20AM. Beautiful solo day on Blue Sky. 12.96 miles / 4,065' gain / 7 hours, 1 minute 

Route: West Ridge from Echo Lake
Posted On: 5/17/2025, By: shaines90
Info: Patchy snow and ice around Echo Lake, mostly dry from there to the Lower Chicago Lake, then continuous snow all the way up to the summit. Spent a lot of time kicking steps in on the slope from Upper Chicago Lake to Summit Lake, and then along the backside of the West Ridge itself. North Face couloirs were pretty well filled in most of the way, but it did appear that the snow dried out to pure rock at the very top, so if anyone is planning on hitting those soon they will need to be comfortable with what looked like a class 3 exit. Sawtooth is still full winter conditions and likely will be for at least a few more weeks. Descended the eastern slopes from the summit through variable sugar snow and bulletproof snow. Wore spikes from Upper Chicago Lake until back to Summit Lake. Will add pictures of the North Face and Sawtooth either tonight or tomorrow morning. 

Route: West Ridge from Guanella Pass
Posted On: 5/13/2025, By: Splitboard14ers
Info: Started at 7:30am due to having climbed Longs day before and finished in late evening plus a 3 hour drive to Guanella Pass. No snow on road from trail head, it's been plowed. Walked 1.5 miles to snow line, began skin out to couloir between Sawtooth and Mt. Spalding. Snow was firm enough to skin all the way to couloir and a small way up. Switched to boot pack, and climbed easily up the couloir with no snow collapse. Reached top of couloir, and resumed skinning till reaching rocks at Evans ridge. Made my way across the 4 or 5 false summits and finally stood on the actual Summit by 1:26pm. No snow to drop a line off Summit into the North bowl, but if you're fixed on skiing off Summit, you could pick a line down the West side through the rocks with current snow coverage from last storm filling in decently. I traversed back about 200 feet across the Summit ridge and into the North Bowl, only losing around 50 vertical feet off Summit and rode a very clean line down, one of the only spots which hadn't yet shed loose wet. Slid a little sluff in my tracks, but got good turns and nice snow quality on the ride. Further West from where I dropped, the North Bowl had an enormous section which had previously wet slab released almost the whole width of the bowl. I skinned back across towards Spalding, ascended up and reached the top of the ridge again at 3:17pm. I strapped in and was able to ride from there all the way across and into the couloir which I had ascended. The turns back down the couloir were surprisingly very nice. I reached the bottom, and skinned back the 2 miles through reeds to Guanella Pass, transitioned to boots, and hiked down. I reached the trailhead at 5:30pm. 10 hours round trip because I was moving slow having done a 13 hour day before. Route was 11.4 miles, and 4,200 vert. I chose this route because the road will be closed to Evans all year due a construction project. It's manageable, but the willows in the gulch and the snow are a chore. 

Route: Bierstadt, Sawtooth, Blue Sky
Posted On: 5/3/2025, By: JeffPurdy
Info: Deep snow on west side of sawtooth. Still winter conditions. Snow softened started around eleven with overcast/snow conditions 

Route: West Ridge from Summit Lake
Posted On: 4/15/2025, By: butlerer
Info: Beautiful and sunny day. Parked at the road closure at Naylor Lake TH, about 1.5 miles from the Bierstadt/Guanella Pass TH, and walked up the mostly hard packed road to the TH. Took Gomer's Gully on the way up, which was mostly snow free and only wore spikes on the way up. Took the West ridge to West Evans and traversed over to Mt. Blue Sky. Plenty of snow on the ridge but there's a track through the snow that largely follows the cairned route. Decided to take the less steep Scott Gomer Creek route on the way down, and it added some miles but felt safer at the end of the day. Had to do a couple miles of bushwhacking through/over/around the willows. The snow was DEEP, SOFT, and HEAVY through the creek and basin. Spent several hours post-holing through knee- to waist-deep snow on the way back. Total distance (onX): 17.11 miles, 4495', 14 hours. 

Route: West Ridge from Guanella Pass
Posted On: 3/13/2025, By: mpaskiewicz
Info: Wanted to post this last night since today (3/13) looks like the last best weather day of the winter season, but didn't get back until late. Went up Blue Sky on 3/12 taking the route up Scott Gomer Creek area instead of the steepr gully, as mentioned by ILnoise. Either I turned left too early or their trench in the flat part of the Willows was blown in from recent winds. Still, I only postholed in snow shoes once or twice as the snow was pretty good for mid morning, and I was able to follow traces of something in several places. I was able to see their work where it really counted going up the steeper willow slopes into the creek gully (thank you!). Between their efforts and yesterday's traffic (there appeared to be more snow shoe tracks on my way down but did not see anyone else on the mountain) the trench is very very in. I took floatation off just above 13k, but I could see how it could be used depending on how you take Mt. Spaulding's west ridge until 13,500. On the actual traverse along the west ridge to the summit, melting and freezing made some of the snow slopes hard, slick, icy, etc. In certain spots, a careless slip would seem to lead to a less than ideal outcome despite the moderate exposure rating (true in summer). So traction may be preferable in those places for some. I decided to spend more time exercising care in those spots than the time to put my spikes on. That was the only surprise of the day, aside from the Willows mostly being effortless. Full moon on the way out made for a great headlamp too. Mt. Blue Sky made for a great day to end the calendar winter season with 10 new flakes this year. 

Route: West Ridge from Guanella Pass
Posted On: 3/9/2025, By: ILnoise
Info: Summited Blue Sky and nearby 13er Spaulding via West Ridge from Guanella Pass. Noted we gained the ridge via Scott Gomer Creek area and not the steeper gully described in the route. Had no issues with avvy risk. One or two whumps in the willows where it was flat. Everything on a slope was pretty hard packed and sounded solid. Ascending the road from the winter closure: there is a snowshoe track leaving the road at the first hairpin turn. However, this track shortcuts to a higher point on the road, making it unnecessary. Take the snowshoe track leaving from the second hairpin to reach Bierstadt/Blue Sky area. Road is well packed as is the trench leaving the road. We followed this for awhile until making a hard left across the willows, where we put in a trench. I had expected fairly gruesome postholing through the willows. I'd say it was somewhat gruesome, so better than expected, but still slow work. Anyway, there's a trench in now so go out and get it while you can. Flotation highly recommend. The steeper gully described in this route had a moderate amount of snow in it. I didn't get to its base or assess the snow quality, but it looked like you could axe your way up there. We opted to gain the ridge near the creek as mentioned earlier. This made for a longer day in terms of mileage but much more mellow, and a more direct route when nabbing Spaulding along the way (By the way, that peak has like 7 punishingly false summits). Put on snowshoes when we left the road. Briefly removed them during the scramble out to Blue Sky and back, then kept them on all the way back to the car. Stats about 11:37 round trip with just over 4k vert and 12.54mi. 

Route: West Ridge from Guanella Pass
Posted On: 2/25/2025, By: Ptglhs
Info: Didn't summit. It made it to about 12.1 before I turned around because the snow was too deep and unstable. It looked like there'd been one other person who booted up and skied down via the same way, but either they are much lighter than I am or had much bigger snowshoes or both. There's a good trench from the parking lot all the way up to where I turned off from the bierstadt trail, and someone could probably follow my trench up to 12.1. at that point the best way to go would probably be cross the climbers ride over a small gully and start to ascend a more exposed ridge to get out of the snow. 

Route: West Ridge from Summit Lake
Posted On: 10/15/2024, By: Lucky Day
Info: Blue Sky from Bierstadt via Sawtooth. Everything is dry as a bone! was warm and not windy. Came down the gulley and it's more loose than usual and the bogs are pretty boggy and wet. Lots of people on Bierstadt, just a few on Blue Sky and a few goats. 

Route: West Ridge from Guanella Pass
Posted On: 9/14/2024, By: cougar
Info: Just a few spots of mud on the trail through the willows, frozen in the morning and the deepest spots can be avoided with careful stepping. A bit of ice in the upper gully from the water flowing down, but not much to be an issue, just watch your step if lighting is low. Fall colors coming in good in the willows and tundra, and aspen along Guanella Pass road. Trailhead still busy with cars along road by 7 on weekend, but this route didn't have many people.