Mt Evans attempt from Guenella Pass

Having done Bierstadt a month or so earlier we decided to try Evans from the same trailhead. My mother had heard us talk about other hikes up the 14ers we had done, and decided to come with us. She had never done a 14er before. We had read in Roach's book about this trail, and examined the map carefully. We were going the less difficult but longer more northern route. We started down the Bierstadt trail, after crossing Scott Gomer creek, we found a small trail leading north. This trail quickly ended and we started bashing through the willows. It being an extremely dry summer helped through the wetlands. We crossed to the north side of the creek, and bashed some more. We then crossed back to the other side and continued hiking the slope towards mt Spalding. We were looking for a trail that heads north/south but never found it. Finally we just started heading south towards the ridge of Spalding. We just about summitted Spalding. We then got on some nice flat ground and crossed the saddle between Spalding and Evans. We got to the point where the Sawtooth ends, and saw a couple of people comming from Evans. We were quite tired from the willows. It was also getting late, around 2:30pm. We were told it was still about a mile from our spot. We had lunch, and decided to turn back. We chose the more direct route for the decent. We hiked down to the steep couloir, and started down. I slipped twice, and ended up putting my hand directly onto a cactus both times. We got to a rather pretty spot where things leveled out a bit, and tried to find a less steep route down. All for naught. After about twenty minutes we gave up and hit the couloir again. We finally got down to the willows and the soft ground again. We could see the parking lot, and it still looked a long ways away. We were all getting discouraged and tired. We had not brought enough water and we had just run out. We still had a lot of willow bashing in front of us. The spongy earth was not helping our mood. Eventually we ended up just walking in the creek, wet feet be damned. We finally hit the Bierstadt trail again and made the hike back up to the car. It is amazing how tough a 300ft elevation gain can feel when one is exausted. We got back to the car at about 6pm. We drove down to Idaho springs and had the best pizza in all of Colorado at Beau Joe's. All in all this was probably the most miserable I have ever been on a hike.