We had done two strong 14ers already (Elbert and Yale). I felt like the kids needed a break. Anna had already done Bierstadt, as her second 14er, several years ago. But, Nolan, was not on that trip, and had not done Bierstadt. So after doing Elbert we drove to the Guanella Pass Trail head. We picked the flattest spot in the parking lot and got the car ready for sleeping. I was watching the weather for the next day and I was a little concerned. It definitely looked like it was going to be raining the next day. In fact. It looked like it was gonna be raining up until just past midnight, that night. So it seemed like there was a small window to try to get in a hike. In order to fit in the window I felt like we needed to consider an early start. So I set the alarm for 4 AM, with the potential of getting a pre-sunrise start. About an hour before the alarm went off, another hiker walked by our vehicle and I saw his headlamp It was just before 3 AM in the morning. I got out of the car and asked him if he was headed up this morning. He said he was. So that inspired me to try to get the kids up. I got the kids moving pretty easily. I don’t think they realized how early it was, although I did tell them. I think just getting up at any time was tough for them. But we all got moving and got started around 3 AM.

This was the earliest start that I’ve probably done in many many years, and the only time I’ve ever started this early on a relatively easy peak. But it was good to get started. The skies were looking pretty good, and it would give us a chance to get done early. The hike went well. There was only maybe a dozen headlamps ahead of us and behind us. It was dark until a little over halfway. We got some great sunrise pictures. As we got closer to summit, more people passed us. We reach the summit in just under four hours.

We only spent spent 30 minutes on the summit, then headed down. There was a very very light drizzle on the summit but it never really built up. As we were heading down, there were a lot of people going up. I bet we passed 100 to 200 people during our descent. It was great to be the ones going down. As we got closer to the bottom, maybe 30 minutes from the trail head, we started moving a lot faster. We decided that we wanted to try to get McDonald’s breakfast. And that required that we get to the McDonalds by 10:30 AM. We had very little room for error. So we started booking downhill. Anna was actually running. It was fun seeing the faces of all the people going up, with this 13-year-old girl running down. We got down pretty quickly. Total round-trip was six hours and 36 minutes. Just as a point of reference, the first time that Anna did Bierstadt, it took us 9 hours and forty minutes. We packed up quickly, jumped in the car, and drove as fast as I could drive safely to Idaho Springs, and pulled into the parking lot McDonald’s drive-through just in time for breakfast.

Overall this is a great 14er trip. The kids did amazing. I could definitely tell, day to day, they were getting stronger and stronger. This is the first time we had driven to Colorado for a trip like this, and I actually enjoyed the drive. I felt like it was a nice drive, it gave me chance to spend some time with the kids and we weren’t relying on the schedule of the airlines or possibly losing our luggage. Plus we could live out of the car that we were driving to Colorado. Overall a great trip.