"The willows suck!"

How many times have you seen/heard that stated? I have many times (honestly, probably most of the times that section of the Bierstadt Alternate Route is referenced).

Well, good news! The willows are avoidable.

I've been on hundreds of wilderness outings, including numerous off-trail adventures, so I've developed a reasonably good sense of topographical awareness. When I did the Bierstadt>Sawtooth>Blue Sky>Alt-Route-Exit a few years ago, I noticed a wholly unmarked off-trail possibility that I was tempted even at the time to pursue as my exit. But, I decided to trust the "official alt route" GPX track instead... and was appalled by what I found in "the willows" section I soon entered. It's horrible---endlessly pushing through bushes while splooshing and squishing through water and mud, and often having, at best, poor cues as to how close you actually are to the intended route. I very much wished I'd succumbed to my earlier temptation instead.

Since then, I've been meaning to get back out there to scout the potential route I'd seen to determine if it really was viable, or if it had merely appeared to be. At long last, I did so yesterday.

Verdict: It very much is viable, and in my opinion, it is a far better option than "the willows" below it. The short description of the route is that it's just a cut-through from the regular alt route back to the main route, but it reconnects much earlier/higher up to entirely circumvent the willows segment. You follow the normal "alt route" down the steep, narrow, reddish-soil gully to the broad grassy ledge most of the way down. (See where first pic below was taken from. Note that all parts of this cut-through are easier than the gully; probably, "easy Class 2", at most.) However, instead of continuing straight to drop down the last section to the valley floor and the willows section beyond, turn left and follow the big ledge somewhat up, across, down, around, and a little up, to reach the main trail again. And, then it's just cruise control from there on, down and out to the parking lot.

This cut-through is almost exactly 1 mile long, and it requires a little bit of elevation gain (a couple hundred feet?), but there's no brush or swamp water or mud to go through---at least not from what I encountered while scouting. I mean, there's definitely no required pushing through brush, and all water/mud was easily avoidable (but, I suppose I can't promise that's always true). Even though there's a little elevation to regain, for me this cut-through option is an easy choice to make since it entirely avoids the willows.

Sorry about the badly stitched-together images showing the estimated route, but I think they're "good enough" to get the point across, and I wanted the overall estimates to be in one image (each). At any rate, the attached GPX track definitely does the job. (Though, I will point out that I have included only the cut-through section, so you should still grab the GPX files for the full main and alt routes.)

Note: It's my understanding that the lowest parts of the main route, before all the boardwalk work was done to improve them, used to be a lot more like the alt route's willows section. At that time, perhaps the alt route didn't really feel all that much worse, nor the main route much of an advantage to get back to sooner. But, that's just not true now.