Mt. Bierstadt 8/29/2006

I started my hike up Mt. Bierstadt early - intentionally, because I wanted to see the alpenglow. This is looking northwest from the parking lot at the top of Guanella Pass at 11,669' (just a tick above timberline).

A view of what's to come. Bierstadt (right) and the Sawtooth (figure out which one it is by the name) from the road at dawn.

An unnamed lake at Guanella Pass. It was about 28 degrees when I started hiking at 6:45am, so the tundra was all frozen over.

A little higher on the trail. Still early.

Looking north from about 12,000'. The trail reaches a bench a little above here and climbs fairly gently along the edge of the beautiful cirque formed by Bierstadt and the Sawtooth (there's a photo of that coming later in the show...)

Another shot looking northwest over the beaver ponds at Guanella Pass.

Almost up at the bench (R side of the photo).

Looking west from about 12,500'. The pointy peak towards the left is Square Top Mountain at 13,754'. The tan strip is the road over Guanella Pass.

A hiker heading down, for scale. Where's Waldo?

The first chance you get to look out to the east. You reach the ridge at 13,780'. The summit is only a 1/4 mile away, but it's all over steep talus. The ridge in the foreground is really cool; very sharp and jagged, running due east from Bierstadt's summit. The high point on it is 13,641'. Epaulet Mountain is in the background (13,523').

From the summit. Starting at left, from south to west to northeast. The photos were screwy and didn't stitch together into a full 360 panorama well.

Taken from the summit, from north to east to south.

From the summit of Mt. Bierstadt at 14,060'. The furthest peak right is Mt. Evans (14,264'); you can drive to the top. Abyss Lake foreground.

A cool view of Evans, Epaulet, Abyss Lake, and Bierstadt's east ridge. Awesome alpine terrain.

North from Bierstadt's summit is The Sawtooth. You can traverse this ridge to get to Evans (class 3).

There were lots of other people on the summit most of the time I was there, but I kinda prefer to take self portraits when I hike solo. I actually did have the summit to myself for about 5 or 10 minutes. This self timer shot actually came out relatively decent (and gives precedence to the mountains, which is cool).

I sat up on the summit for about two hours just because it was so freaking nice out and so freaking beautiful.

Not frozen currently, being the end of August and all, but Frozen Lake is another little tarn that lies southeast of Bierstadt. There's tons of them in the area.

Westward Ho!

Winter is coming. This little spring ran down the trail for a ways, and was still mostly iced over even at noon, when I was descending.

Bierstadt, The Sawtooth, and a section of trail at about 13,000'.

The cirque is really spectacular. I literally stopped on the trail for a good 15 minutes and just stared at it.