Log entries Mt. Bierstadt Summit
1x
0x
0x
3x Gallery
2015-09-07 08:30
Team Dennis
(
5)
- Found it
Today is day 10 of my epic 2 week road trip. I spent the night in the parking lot camped out next to a couple from Houston, TX. It was cute to see them all bundled up in the bone chilling 50° temps while I walked around in shorts and a hoodie. It was neat to watch the sun set on the mountain but that meant it was bed time as 5AM comes faster than you think.
I woke up about 5 minutes before my alarm and the parking lot was buzzing with climbers. I got out of my warm cocoon of a car and was slapped in the face with much colder temps than I expected and a nice breeze, too. My friends from TX must have gotten too cold because their car was nowhere to be found!
Now I thought we were starting early but there were already head lamps visible up near the summit!!! I figure they must have started around 2 or 3AM to get up there that soon.
Inga and I began our hike at 5:20AM. It seemed like it took forever to get through the valley and to the start of the climb. The first 2 miles or so went well but then we hit the steep part and that was almost a killer. We took quite a few soul searching breaks in that stretch but finally we made it to the boulder field and we knew the summit was near. I shed my pack and we had a fun time hopping up to the summit. Inga is a natural at stuff like this. She did a great job of picking a line and then crushing it.
We gained the summit at 8:30AM...not bad for a flatlander and his pup! It had been cloudy and windy all morning but when we got to the top it became sunny and CALM. It was actually the best conditions of the day. We climbers stood around talking and taking photos for each other for about 20 minutes before we decided to get moving down while the getting was good. We could see a large crowd headed up and we wanted to give them their space.
Our descent was pretty uneventful but it seemed to take much longer than it should have. When we finally got to the base we crawled right into our bunk and took a 30 minute power nap just to refresh a bit. Great cache...great memories and great times out here today.
Thank you for encouraging my behavior.
Aaron
Team Dennis
Stilly Caching Society - Charter Member and President for Life
