“Pikes Peak or Bust”-Saying of the Old West

Waking up that morning I saw an extraordinary sight, the sunrise over Pikes Peak. After grabbing an exquisite continental breakfast that included green chili eggs (a staple of the Colorado diet) we headed to Garden of the Gods, a park in Colorado Springs. Garden of the Gods is a unique geological structure owned by the city featuring some of the most impressive red rocks in North America. Before exploring the garden, you first go through the visitor center and get to travel in a “time machine” that takes you back through the formation of the rock formations. I have to admit that it was some pretty exciting stuff, but one scout remarked that we shouldn’t bother going back in time if we couldn’t save Tupac (he had a point).  We then hiked around the formation for around an hour and witnessed another group receive a $500 fine for climbing in an unauthorized area. We then returned on the bus to head to Manitou Springs, the town at the base of Pikes Peak.

Manitou Springs is an interesting tourist town, like many a front range town, Manitou Springs still believes it’s the early 70’s. Anyways, Manitou Springs does have a few interesting things to offer including the world’s largest outdoor arcade with hundreds of pinball machines, eight natural springs that you can drink, and a rubber duck store. With about two hours to spare before heading up the mountain, we wasted our time on those three activities. We decided to buy a rubber duck and named it Chris after our bus driver, the rubber duck became like a mascot for our crew and is perhaps the highest climbing rubber duck in America (get ready for pictures of Chris the mountain duck).

We then got on a bus to head up the 14,114 mountain that is Pikes Peak. For some perspective, it is the 53^rd highest mountain in Colorado but one of the two “14ners”, as their called, that cars can drive up. Usually to get up Pikes Peak, you use the COG railway but it currently under renovation so you either have to take a bus or drive. The drive up to Pikes Peak is spectacular though it takes about an hour as one can only drive at about 15 mph. We could slowly see the tree line recede and before you know it we were up in mountain goat territory. Reaching the summit, the air is so thin, one gets a headache. However, there is four bars on AT&T up there, so we were able to Instagram live stream from 14,000 ft. There is also a trading post with high altitude donuts (I don’t know what makes donuts “high altitude”). Unfortunately, the scout with asthma got altitude sickness so upon heading back down, we decided to buy him bottled oxygen at a nearby REI store. We then had a buffet dinner and headed back to the hotel to get some rest before going to Aspen the next morning.