Hike Big

Info:

Trip Report:

What can I say, it was awful.

I wish I had something more then that but I don’t. There were two saving graces to this hike. One, I got to see a Pika for the first time and two, we saw a Mountain Goat.

The hike over all wasn’t actually that bad. We started off from the Guanella Pass trail head and followed the Bierstadt trail until you reach the first big boulder just after the creek crossing. There’s a path that leads you into the willows where you bush whack for quite aways until you reach a gully. Now, from the parking lot you can see the gully and it looks about as do-able as a grizzly den. Once you reach the gully, however, it looks, well, just about the same.

The fun part of the Gully is all the wild life. It’s a haven for Pika and Marmots a like. In fact I have never seen as many Pika and Marmots on any other hike then I’ve seen here and judging from all of the wool I’d imagine the Mountain Goats favor this area as well. If you’ve never heard a Pika taking the gully to Evans is the way to go. You are serenaded by what sounds like squeaky toys the entire way up, literally.

After crawling up scree, boulders and fending off madness the gully widens into a vast open area. To the right is the sawtooth between the two peaks (Bierstadt and Evans), to the left is Mt. Spalding (a piddly 13er) and up the middle is a false summit for Evans. If you’ve ever done Evans you know what I’m talking about because as you approach your hopes get high. You start to think to yourself “oh, I’m almost there” then you are crushed as you find out you’re still faced with a one mile traverse across some of the worst/uneven hiking ever. When you finally near the summit you get to join the rank and file of tourists that took the road to the top.

Yes, you heard right, you can drive to the summit. There’s a parking lot just 50 to 100 feet shy of the top. Sitting there, short of breath, smelling like the goat you passed on the way you wonder, why did I climb Evans again? Oh, that’s right, it was on the list.

Long story short, the view isn’t all that great (if you’ve ever done any other peaks that is) and the top is extremely crowded by tourists in flip-flops and shorts. I know it’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey and while these people drove to the top in their cars they missed out on some of the breath taking scenes and sites (Pikas!), but wow what a buzz kill.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 14th, 2008 at 3:16 pm and is filed under 14ers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.