4th of July on Mount Bierstadt - 14,060 ft.

4th of July called for my first Colorado 14er hike of the summer. I am interning in Colorado Springs this summer and today was finally the day. Long story short, I fractured the navicular bone in my left foot at the very end of February 2019 (I will eventually write a post about this). Essentially, I came out to Colorado mid-May still on crutches, but nearing the end of this 2 whole month stint.

To begin the day, I woke up at 3am. My friend Dennis met me at my apartment and then we started our drive to the trailhead at around 3:40am. We arrived at the trailhead at 6:15am and it was already crowded. We started the hike at 6:40am and the first mile was extremely flat. Just before the first mile, there was a fairly strong creek that we had to cross. Along with some other hikers, we tried to find a way to go around it, but after about 5 minutes, I determined that it would just be easiest to walk through the creek. My shoes were soaked but didn't feel that bad so it was okay.

Soon after the creek crossing, we began to finally gain some elevation and begin the real hiking. Nothing really eventful happened for awhile, but, eventually, we began to encounter multiple snowfields that will continue to appear all the way up to the summit. Thankfully, my dad suggesting hiking poles and they were extremely helpful for extra traction. I never postholed, so that was pretty nice. There were also some icy areas, but nothing bad.

Nearing the summit, there was a ton of boulder scrambling (which was extremely fun). I had one extremely close call, though, where I (somehow) barely caught myself from taking a bad fall. 2 hours and 14 minutes after beginning the hike, we reached the summit. Of course, we took some pictures with a rad cardboard sign that I made the night before. We spent 17 minutes at the summit and then soon began the trek down the mountain.

In my opinion, scrambling down the boulders was more difficult than scrambling up them. It slowed us down a bit, but again, it was extremely fun. The journey down took us 1 hour and 45 minutes. 4 hours and 15 minutes was the total time (all breaks included) it took us to hike up and down Mt. Bierstadt. My Garmin recorded the hike as 7.65 miles RT with an elevation gain of 2,742 ft. I didn't eat anything during the hike, so I was excited to eat my huge bag of trail mix (salted mix nuts, chocolate m&m’s, and granola clusters) when we finished.

This hike went better than expected. Actually, I really had no clue what to expect. I did 0 exercise from early March until mid June and can count on two hands the amount of exercise I have done in the past 4 months. Given, I was in the best endurance shape of my life right when I got injured, but, still, I had not exercised for such a long time. I am still working on fixing my atrophied left leg and hopefully will begin running very soon. I am extremely thankful to be making significant progress and can’t wait for more adventures.