14er Report #7: Mt. Evans and West Evans (Late Summer, via Bierstadt and Sawtooth)

Cirrus Over Bierstadt, #1. From Mt. Evans, Colorado, 2014

From the Guanella Pass Trailhead, the Sawtooth is pretty awe-inducing. To think that there is actually a trail that traverses high across the west face of that massive precipice!

Sawtooth-Bierstadt Massif. Colorado, 2014

That is what excited me about this trip and it certainly lived up to its fame.

This loop is fairly long, so make sure you are in good shape and you leave the trailhead nice and oily…er, early. Plan on 11 hours or so if you are in middling shape and make sure you are on your way down no later than noon to avoid getting busted by a mid-day thunderbumper and its associated electrically-charged javelins.

As I do each of these trips, I am slowly refining my hiking and photography gear–trying to lighten the load and make things as convenient as possible. I haven’t arrived at the ideal setup yet, but I am slowly moving that way. In this Trip Report, I have added a “Photography Issues” section to address what I am learning about trying to pack in with quality (heavy!?) photographic equipment.

Mt. Evans (14,264′) Trip Report

Route:

After Longs Peak, I figured this would be another fun Class 3 route. In truth, maybe I should have reversed the order of my climbs since this route is actually a great warm-up for Longs. The Bierstadt-Sawtooth-Evans combo approaches the distance and vertical that you’ll do on Longs and mixes in some Class 3 with some exposure that, in my opinion, isn’t quite as sustained as Longs.

The trail up Bierstadt is a veritable highway, given how many feet use it, especially on weekends. They are doing some trail work to improve some of the upper sections and I’m always impressed by their Inca-like stonework with BIG rocks, making rock stairs, water bars, erosion control banks, viewing thrones, and so on. Their efforts are much appreciated (Colorado Fourteeners Initiative?).

The Sawtooth section was pretty well-cairned and easy to follow, especially after studying the photos a bit on 14ers.com. I recommend the lower of the two pictured options to climb over the “gendarme” to the ridge (it is well-trampled and easy to follow). The Ledges section has some incredible exposure and, I am sure, could potentially be very hazardous with snow and ice and without the proper gear. Dry, though, it is not difficult–just move slowly and place your feet deliberately, especially in the scree sections. Don’t freak out if, before you go, you watch some of the YouTube videos of this section–those wide-angle GoPro cameras make the traverse look worse than it really is.

From the top of the Ledges on Sawtooth you leave behind the sharp cliffs and emerge into a world of smooth, sensuous, mountain curves and high tundra. I went straight across to the saddle between Mount Spalding and West Evans, but you can shorten things by angling up directly toward West Evans. You may even want to climb up to the top of the Sawtooth itself for some amazing views.

From the Mount Spalding-West Evans saddle, the West Ridge all the way to the Mt. Evans summit has some beautiful and fun scrambling. The rock is gorgeous, colorful, solid, sticky granite, the views are tremendous, and you can vary between Class 2 and Class 3 depending on your druthers. Be warned, though, the ridge will seem almost interminable as you boulder-hop along, Cassidy, so if getting to the Mt. Evans summit quickly is your priority (weather moving in?), take the well-cairned trail which drops down below and parallels the West Ridge.

The return to Guanella Pass from Evans is quite infamous as many people follow the current 14ers.com route description and end up dropping down the “hidden gully” and then fighting their way through the Dreaded Willows and Swamp section in the large drainage between the Sawtooth and the parking lot. I have heard horrific stories of mud up to the shins. Aaack! There is no need to do that. I followed the Scott Gomer Creek variation, which is a bit longer, but my boots stayed dry (this is late summer, too, which helps). There was one small creek to hop and I had to bushwhack maybe 400-500 yards of willows before the parking lot (mostly due to poor route-finding decisions on my part), but it wasn’t near the nightmare of the “standard” descent route as you’ll find on 14ers.com.

Here is how I would describe this key, “boots dry”, Mt. Evans-Guanella Pass descent option:

From the summit of Mt. Evans, return to the area of the Spalding-Evans West Ridge saddle. From here start contouring gently down to the right (NW) so as to cross well below the Mount Spalding summit but also well above the unseen cliffs below you to the left. The soft, wide-open tundra makes for easy walking. You are aiming for the Scott Gomer Creek drainage. Try to cross Scott Gomer Creek fairly high up (it’s harder to cross lower down).

Once across, parallel the creek downhill, but work your way slightly right as you approach some broken cliff and rock areas above a small moose-friendly alpine lake. (This is the very small treeline lake, right next to the Forest Boundary, that you will see depicted on the topo in Gerry Roach’s book, page 38). Your goal is to find the faint trail which runs along the right (NW) side of that lake (pond?). There are supposedly cairns to guide you through the rock bands down to this lake, but I dropped down too early (too south-ish) and missed them, bushwhacking a bit.

Once on the trail by this small lake, though, the walking becomes easy, so just follow it! It may fade in and out, or cross a downed tree, but it always will reappear. Once you get down through the forest and emerge into the willowy area, follow the trail(s!), staying on the high ground across two small hills or bumps. You’ll cross one small, swampy creek (hopable in late summer).

After the two hills/bumps you are within maybe a quarter mile of the parking lot–pick the best route (probably angling left or south between the familiar large trailhead lake and the parking lot to pick up the last few hundered yards of the Bierstadt Trail, although I went right). In these last few hundred yards, you may swear a bit, scratch your legs in the willows, get mud on the sides of your boots…but the mud should never go over your uppers and into your socks. Good luck!

A photograph of the general idea:

Descent via Scott Gomer Creek. Guanella Pass area, Colorado, 2014

Timeline:

A 1:25a.m. departure from Boulder.

After some star photography at the Guanella Pass parking lot, I was walking uphill at 3:20a.m. and on the summit of Bierstadt at 5:45a.m., roughly a half hour before sunrise. (Timed this way for photography, of course.)

At 6:45a.m. I started down the scree toward the Sawtooth along with Elliott, a Colorado School of Mines engineering student from Golden, the only other Bierstadt summit companion wanting to go on. With plenty of stops for photography and an average pace, we finished the wonderful Sawtooth difficulties and topped out in the smooth tundra at about 8:15a.m. From here, Elliott headed down so as to make his 1p.m. university class–oh, to be young again!

As I did not head directly for West Evans and since I also elected to take the Class 2-3 granite amusement park option along the West Ridge, I was pretty slow making the summit block of Mt. Evans, arriving finally at about 10:15a.m.

After some lunch and pictures, I was headed down at 10:30a.m. and back to the trailhead by about 2:30p.m. (I am a slow descender–saving the knees and feet), just as the clouds way up on a now distant Mt. Evans were thickening to a dark boil.

Weather Conditions:

Temps in the mid-40s at the start–positively balmy! An occasional wind would rear up, disturbing the normal calm, with gusts to maybe 15mph. At the summit of Bierstadt, the wind was pretty chilly and strong–maybe up to 25mph. It’s tough to carry the right clothes combinations when you sweat your way up, then freeze your fanny taking pictures on a windy 14er summit in the pre-dawn chill.

By sunrise, there were some large waves of low cumulus clouds building, mostly to the

Building Cumulus. Mt. Bierstadt, Colorado, 2014

west, which (thankfully) burned off as the morning progressed. The winds also eventually died down to almost nothing. High cirrus clouds during the day made the photography much more interesting. (Gotta hate pure blue skies!)

By 10:30a.m. or so the cumulus were once again building, this time for real. By 2:30p.m., the summit of Evans would not have been a good place to hold up a wet golf club.

Trail Conditions:

Late summer, so things are getting pretty dry. The Bierstadt, Sawtooth, and Evans sections are all well-cairned. The only issue is routing-finding your way to a willow and swamp-free descent back to the parking lot (see the “boots dry” option above).

Photography Issues:

–The DSLR-Zoom Gorilla Pod, although very light, is NOT an effective option for me. It may work for others, but it wasn’t a stable platform at all with my D800–it vibrated in even the slightest breeze as if it were on three coiled springs, even when I tried spreading the legs out nearly flat and trying all bendable combinations. I am still searching for an effective, compact, lightweight tripod. More to follow on this…

–Re above, I lost a number of possibly good images, especially in the low pre-dawn light, by not carrying my usual big tripod. I was trying to lower the weight on my back a bit and I really missed having a stable platform when I needed it.

–I have been walking with my camera on a Black Rapid strap and this seems to work OK. But, I have to remove it whenever I take off my pack, so it isn’t ideal. The search goes on…

–Walking through the willows with my camera on the above-mentioned strap was not a good idea. The lens body was scraped and scratched (the lens hood and cap protected the lens itself).

–I am still working on a way to have quick access to my lenses. As it is, I have to take off my pack to pull out a different lens from my pack side pockets–not ideal.

–I knew the phase and azimuth of the Moon via The Photographer’s Ephemeris, but I should have looked more closely at how high it would be at sunrise. It was a bit too pie-high in the sky to build a nice composition at dawn. Doing this trip just one day later would have given me better Moon position for photography (weather permitting, of course!).

Unusual Events/Comments:

I had the Bierstadt summit alone for about 15 minutes before the first three or four hikers appeared. (They were the first of many…my images from about 10:00a.m. on, looking across at Bierstadt from Evans, show at least 10 folks on the summit at any given time.)

Wildlife count: Mountain goats, mule deer, moose (at the alpine lake on the descent), various birds from hawks to the small guys and gals flitting about the tundra and snowbanks.

You can tell summer is coming to an end…not so many folks at the Mt. Evans parking lot (I actually had the Evans summit to myself for a few minutes!) and the Guanella Pass road was not completely vehicle-lined.

Water sources… Scott Gomer Creek! Beautiful place. I drank the water, goat turds be damned, and so far I am still alive and my poops are solid.

Colorado 14er Senior Challenge summit count: 11 of the basic list of 58 (p. xxiii in Gerry Roach’s 14er “Bible”, Colorado Fourteeners, 3rd Ed.); 12 of the long list of 73 (pp. 347-348, with South Wilson added, also in Roach’s “Bible”.

Select Images:

Parking lot stars…