Speaking of early, I departed Denver somewhere around 3am Saturday morning, zipping up an empty I-70 to Georgetown, and a heavily under-construction Guanella pass, down to one-lane in a couple places.  Not that it was much of an issue at 4am on a chilly late-summer morning. At the trailhead I was mildly suprised that there were a couple other folks rambling about, making preparations for their own day.

At 4:30am the morning was dark, cold, and clear. The nearly full moon had set, leaving the sky positively blazing with stars and the Milky Way. I switched on my headlamp and crunched my way down the trail, which was under just a couple inches of snow, which I pretty much expected. The first hour of the trek was uneventful as I crossed the Willows, skidded across the creek on icy rocks and climbed up past the stubby trees and brittle willows.

By about 6:00 the sky was beginning to lighten to the east, and I was faced with a bit of a quandary (no pun intended). There'd been a LOT more snow high on the mountain than I'd expected. Not so much that it was impassible, but enough that the normally wide and easily hiked trail was completely obscured.

Not really wanted to start an exploratory search pattern, I started picking a path more or less straight up the west flank of Bierstadt, aiming for the saddle just to the south of the summit.  The going was a little on the slow and tedious side as the snow was alternately a mere inch or two deep and then drifting to a foot or more.

For the next hour I broke trail in tight switchbacks and watched in awe at the alpenglow gathering to the west on Grays and Torreys, and far off to the north on Long's Peak. Finally reaching the saddle, I turned left and began picking my way along the summit ridge, sharing the terrain with a stiff, 25mph+ wind. And still, there was more snow than I'd expected here, which turned the last few hundred feet of the climb into an icy scramble. The scrambling wasn't difficult at all, and in fact rather enjoyable.

As I'd pretty much expected, I had the summit to myself, and could pretty much have it as long as I wanted. The next closed climbers were probably a good hour below me, judging on the trio of slow-moving dots I could see a thousand feet below me. However, the chilling wind didn't really lend itself to lingering for very long, and after a few minutes of introspection and reflective quite (yes, minus the wind), I began the hike/scarmble back down to the saddle.

Over the next couple hours I felt like the proverbial salmon swimming upstream, thanks to the throngs of climbers who'd departed the trailhead at a more civilized hour. Just for fun I kept track, and counted a total of 217 climbers headed up during my descent. And the day warmed up significantly during the descent, turning crusty snow to slushy snow and then to mud down lower. At 9:30 I completed the round trip to the trailhead, happy to leave the mountain to the climbing throngs.