Mt. Bierstadt: Two Boys, G-Men
CO 14ers Trip-Report Part III
Aug 12, 2025 | ~8:00 a.m. – 1:30 p.m. MT
Summit: 14,066 ft.
Route: West Slopes | Total Gain: 2,850 ft. | Distance: 7.25 mi.
G-Man was the first person to consider me a mentor. His family moved into our neighborhood when I was about four years old and he was about four months old. G-Man was the first infant I ever held. I knew my sister as an infant too, but when she arrived, I was still too little to hold her. Being only seventeen months apart, my relationship to her has always been mentor–mentor, never mentor–mentee. As if we were twins, people would always ask which of us was older. G-Man and his family moved away when I was ten and he was six, but in the time we were neighbors, our parents had become great friends, our sisters had become best friends, and we had bonded as brothers. Early in my life, I was told by my parents and his that G-Man looked to me as an example of how to be. That’s a heavy and helpful thing to be told as a kid; it made me want to behave in a way that befit a mentor.
For the next few days, I’m staying with G-Man and his family, who now live in Colorado, to share the sort of quality time that we haven’t had in years. And what better way to reconnect than to go on a five-and-a-half-hour walk together? G-Man agrees to hike the next 14er on my list, Mt. Bierstadt, with me. It will be his second 14er, after (coincidentally) hiking Mt. Sherman with his parents a week ago, and it will be the first Class-2 climb for us both.
Even on a Tuesday morning, the trailhead parking area is nearly full; we find one of the last remaining spots along the curb. Today’s is the type of weather worthy of a PTO-day: perfectly clear yet not too hot, inviting. We start off by winding through a marshland, enshrouded in viny vegetation, then come to a clearing at a creek with a bridge-crossing. The bridge is a threshold of a god realm; lush grasslands in the foreground, carrying the creek, blend with the steeper slopes ahead, which suddenly become jagged towers of rock. We step on through.
I ask G-Man what he’s focused on right now, and he tells me about dropping out of business school, working at the airport, and training for his commercial pilot’s license. I tell him about my book and my business and that I plan to propose to my girlfriend.
The defining characteristic of Mt. Bierstadt is actually the sawtooth saddle-ridge that connects it to another, taller 14er, Mt. Blue Sky. From the foot of the mountain’s southwestern slopes, Bierstadt is on our right and Blue Sky on the left. While the sky is cloudless, the sun is still low enough in the east—now, blazing just above the 10 o’clock corner of Mt. Blue Sky—that in these lowlands at 12,000 feet, we are cast in the mountains’ shadow. Their fuzzy triangular forms, and the skyline ridge that links them, span the width of my vision.
Where the grass gives way to gravel, we catch up to a group of four elders in their 70s, two couples, who compliment our hiking pace and our apparent fitness. I ask about the helmets they have strapped to their backpacks, and one woman explains, “We’re doing the combo-route to Blue Sky.” She points northeast and traces the ridge-line, drawing their route. “The helmets are for the sawtooth section, a Class-3.”
“You’re hitting it harder than us,” I say. “We’re just stopping at the summit of Bierstadt.”
“Then you’ve got to come back and try it one day,” one of the men interjects. “We do this route just about every other week in the summer.”
We all exchange the most common valediction among hikers, which takes the form of an emphatic command—”Enjoy!”—and it strikes me that the most potent ingredient in the secret sauce of vitality may be play.
As G-Man and I continue, we talk about the tough stuff too: family conflicts, the elusiveness of purpose and the sometimes seeming absence of meaning, the challenges of money and career, the courage required to live authentically, and the pain that comes from great change. What is normally heavy felt light, as the beats of our conversation matched our uphill strides, and each rest from conversation led to inward walking contemplation inspired by these majestic views. The sun is now high above us, and neither of us is any longer cast in the mountains’ shadow.
The final pitch is a rock-scrambling section that we both revel in. We each find our own routes, by climbing on top of big boulders and bounding over the gaps between them, casually racing each other to the summit.
No matter how difficult life had ever been, or how it had felt this morning upon waking, playing outside together—collaborating on a summit-rock-balance the way we used to work on LEGO projects—it feels like we are boys again, dreaming up our own experiences of reality. Although we G-Boys are now G-Men, today we glimpsed the world with that old yet unforgotten vision, seeing no obstacle as insurmountable and all play as worthwhile. ❛❜
Thank you for reading,
Co 14-ers Trip-Report Series Contents
Part I: Quandary Peak
Part II: Mt. Sherman
Part III: Mt. Bierstadt
Part IV: The Decalibron
Part V: Mt. Elbert
Part VI: Mt. Sunshine via Redcloud Peak
Ostensibly this is just a short passage about how you climbed a mountain and chatted with an old friend, but I could feel the weight of it moving through my body just like your footsteps must have done as you bouldered that final section.
Often I wonder if stories about my daily life are really worth telling, but then I come across something like this that reminds me it's possible to convey the tacit beauty of daily moments through writing, and it's worth trying - especially when it also reminds you of a powerful lesson, like the value of play in all pursuits.
I'm really glad I read this today.