Here's the Bierstadt story: Tracy and I drove the truck up to Guanella Pass, 11,669'. I don't know if we really had planned to climb Bierstadt, but we did want to at least do some hiking, and this looked like a good spot. Come to think of it, Bierstadt would be my first fourteener, since this was the end of my first summer in Colorado. It didn't look too bad, especially starting from that high up, so we parked the truck and started walking. There wasn't really much of a trail, but we could see that the way went through a low area full of bushes, then up the side of the hill to the summit. I read later that the bushes were often referred to as the "infamous willows", since they were really thick - good thing I was wearing jeans. It was a little swampy in the low areas, even though it was that late in the season. I don't think I'd like to go through there in June. The trail split off in several directions, and after a while we were just using dead reckoning to get to the other side, but it wasn't too difficult.

 The trail picked up on the other side of the willows, and was really easy, but gradually became steeper. The higher we got, the more trouble I was having getting my breath - I had to stop and let my lungs catch up every couple hundred feet or so. The odd thing was that the weekend before, I was up on Mt. Evans, a drive-up fourteener, and had no problem with oxygen at all, even doing some strenuous hiking on the ridges below the summit. Tracy had no problem at all, which I attributed to her having lived above 15,000' in Bolivia the two years before coming back to Colorado for a visit. Near the top, we had to do a bit of scrambling on the big boulders, then we reached the summit. I found a piece of PVC tubing connected to a rock with a thin cable, and in the tube was a small notepad and pencil. We added our names to the list and sat up there a while, but it was windy and getting a little chilly. When the snow flurries started we decided it was time to hit the trail, especially since the snow was accompanied by thunder and lightning, which I had never experienced before Colorado. On the way down, I noticed that Tracy's hair had begun to stand on end. This was a little unnerving, but I figured it was just static electricity in the dry air and not an impending bolt of lightning. No lightning ever came near us and we made it down without incident, although we got wet going back through the willows, since the snow had turned to drizzle at that altitude.