My first fourteener! I've been waiting to write this for two weeks.

Eleven of us met at the park-and-ride at 5:00 a.m. in the dark, which Dennis insists is the only civilized time to start a fourteener. We drove up I-70 to Georgetown and then up the Guanella Pass road, part of it gravel, to the trailhead at the top of the pass. The trailhead is already at 11,669 feet, which is why Bierstadt is called an "easy" fourteener. The summit is only about 2,400 feet higher. Easy is a relative term.

We were walking at 6:35. There was frost on everything and the sun was just hitting the peak, turning it pink. The first mile drops down into a wide, flat valley full of willows, which are famous, and now I know why. The willows are taller than your head, the trail wanders through them, and in places it's boardwalk and in places it's mud that wants your boots. Troy lost a boot to it briefly. We got it back.

After the willows the trail climbs steadily up the long west slope of the mountain, switchbacking up through tundra that has already gone gold and red for fall. Above 13,000 feet I slowed way down. Dennis kept us at a pace where we could still talk, and made everybody eat something and drink every half hour, whether we wanted to or not. Near the top the trail fades into a jumble of big boulders, and you pick your way up the last few hundred feet with your hands.

We were on the summit at 10:20. Fourteen thousand and sixty feet. I'm not ashamed to say I cried a little. It was clear and windy and cold, and you could see what seemed like the whole state: Mount Evans right next door across the jagged Sawtooth ridge, Grays and Torreys off to the northwest, and range after range to the west. A family of mountain goats wandered past about fifty yards below the summit, not impressed with any of us. It was Marshall Kendall's first fourteener too. It was Janice Mosely's ninth and Troy Damon's twenty-third, and Troy still stood up there grinning like it was his first.

By 10:45 there were clouds building over the peaks to the west, and Dennis started us down. Nobody argued. By noon the sky behind us was dark gray. We were back at the cars at 1:40, a little before the first rumble of thunder, and Dennis said "That's why," and that was the whole lesson. Burgers in Georgetown after.

The numbers: about 7 miles round trip, 11,669 feet to 14,060 feet, 3 hours 45 minutes up, 25 minutes on top, just under 3 hours down. Water: I drank three liters and could have used more.

What I learned: gaiters for the willows. Sunscreen on the back of your neck. And the people who said I should give myself a couple of weeks at altitude before trying one were right. I'd been in Colorado three months, and I still had a headache by the summit. It went away on the drive down, which is how it's supposed to work.

Sixteen of us, our biggest trip of the year, and the aspens did not disappoint. We parked at Kenosha Pass on Highway 285 and walked the Colorado Trail south and west from the pass, about three miles out, through groves of aspen that were somewhere between peak and a little past: whole hillsides of yellow, with a few trees still green and a few already orange. Where the trail comes out of the trees you get the view everyone comes for, the whole wide bowl of South Park with the Mosquito Range on the far side, already dusted with snow.

We had lunch on the hillside in the sun. Two of our newer members, who had met at the August potluck, held hands the whole way back and thought nobody noticed. Everybody noticed. About 6 miles round trip, 900 feet of climbing, and roughly a thousand photographs. I'll bring mine to the October potluck when they come back from the drugstore.

So many people asked that Natalie led it again on the 25th. Same trail, a week further into fall, with more leaves on the ground than on the trees by then. Still beautiful.

Twelve hikers, one of the prettiest walks on the Front Range, and wildflowers like I've never seen them: Indian paintbrush, columbines, elephant's head along the wet places, and whole meadows of yellow. We started from the Long Lake trailhead above Brainard Lake at 7:30 to get a parking spot (we got the last three), walked the shore of Long Lake, and climbed to Lake Isabelle under the Indian Peaks. Pikas squeaked at us from every rock pile, and a marmot tried to get into Natalie's pack while she was taking a picture of a different marmot. About 4.5 miles round trip. A short shower on the way down, right on schedule at 1:30. We came back wet and happy.