#RT2N Day 4
682 ft. that is the elevation of the house I rent in Milwaukee. Us Milwaukee-ans live at lake level, which I guess is a little higher than sea level. Suck it East and West Coasters. Yea, I said that.
6,175 ft. This is where this journey begins. I camped over night at the Garden of the Gods and woke up bright and early to get to the base of Pikes peak before 6am. I also want to point out that this is literally an order of magnitude higher than where I live. Thankfully I didnt even realize it, probably because I wasn’t strolling through rolling hills but rather just constantly ascending (much like the new Franz Ferdinand song)
So I arrived at the base, ready to go, 14 granola bars, a crap ton of water, emergency supplies, and two (yes two) cameras. I’m excited, and getting a little nervous. I should also mention i have no connection to the internet or just service in general. Most of this trip i was using paper maps. I arrived at the base and foudn the first parking i could. Great i parked. Okay time to go, and whoops, i parked at the wrong trailhead. $10’s wasted. Back to my car and onto the right parking lot. I get there and there is only one available spot. Thats it. I go to pay and the machine asks me how many days i would like to park. Oh crap. Even this parking meter is doubting me at this point.
My optimistic goal is to get up and back down the hill in one day. It’s 21.3 miles with a 7401ft elevation gain, so yea, just a little hike to start of my week. Which means I needed to be one a 35-40 minute/mile pace up the hill. Now I’ve heard the horror stories of the last three miles so I know I should start a little faster than my average pace so that I can take my time near the top. I start whats know as the the Manitou Incline, a 2 mile hike where you you gain 2,000 ft. I start on my way and a mile in i was already regretting my decision…
At 7am is it already 90⁰F. I have been passed by three dogs, all of which had more swag than I ever will. Tricked out in there cool goggles and jackets. Those dang dogs. Anyways, I kept a 30 minute pace. I didn’t realize just how steep the grade was. After just an hour I was beginning to have doubts, especially if the trail continued like that.
Luckily as I passed the very popular Manitou Incline the crowd died down (i guess other people agree that the incline is enough hike for one day). As i’m making my way up I found what ended up being my hiking buddy (also my volun-told Sherpa/guide for the day) MaryAnn.
MaryAnn grew up in Colorado and moved to California 17 years ago where she had her first child at 39, Sydney. She used to hike this exact trail a lot when she was younger but hasn’t since she moved out, she’s now 56. I told her I was heading to the summit and so was she (we were some of the very few who made it up this day) and then we began or journey. I learned about her family and we talked about life. I told her about where I was from and why I was there and just like everyone else, she gave this crazy look. I think they thought us wisconsinites couldn’t survive above 5,000ft or something.
By the time I made it to Barr Camp, I was still close to my initial goal of a 30min/mi pace, including stops for photos and breaks. I got ahead of MaryAnn for a little bit and decided to take amuch deserved break at the camp. Orginially on my way out to colorado my plan was to hike up Pikes Peak and take the famous Cog Railway back down (basically, its a train that has a geared track, theres only a couple left in the world, but it allows the car to go up steep inclines). unfortunately i discovered that the railway was down for the season and potentially forever, depending on future funding. The Cog runs along the trail and every once and awhile its only a mile or two off, it used to have a sstop near Barr camp, which wsa handy for resupplies. When I arried to Barr they had some candy bars and a couple cokes, but once those ran out they werent going to restock it anymroe with the railway down.
I had a chance to refill my water(s) and give my legs a break. When MaryAnn arrived we took a moment to catch up and started on our way back up the hill.
9,000-12,000ft was pretty boring. We made out way through the forest, heads down, keeping a 35-40min pace. We didnt run across anyone, as the last group we saw as the bacholerette group at Barr. Once we got to 12,000ft. we had to stop. It was the point where we were breaking above the trees, approaching tundra.
At this point we began to stop about every 1/10th of a mile for a 1-2-minute breather. I began running low on carbohydrates and water, and I could feel it everywhere. Finally, Maryann and I took a break, I quickly gobbled down a protein bar (I don’t think I can ever eat one again after this trip). And we went on our way. This is also when the weather turned sour. We knew there was a chance of lightning storms so every half mile or, so we noted good shelters just in case we needed to get cover. Thankfully most of the lighting passed us but what we got instead was snow and hail for a good 20 minutes.
Side note, I think I went through seasonal affective disorder in the matter of the day. I went from 90* to snowing to raining all in the matter of minutes which is a lot.
Okay back to the story. After the protein bar I got a bit of a sugar rush and upped my pass from 45 minutes/mile to 35 minutes a mile. Within half a mile my body told me I made the wrong decision. This was the first time I felt altitude sickness coming on, I felt a little queasy (probably from practically inhaling the protein bar) and I lost feeling in my fingertips, they started to turn blue. I stopped for a moment and MaryAnn caught up to me and immediately noticed something was wrong. My heart rate was through the roof. The sugar rush had me all excited to keep going and my body ate up that sugar as quickly as possible, but I was running low on energy to move my muscles. The sugar gave me a façade of energy that almost knocked me right out.
This is also the point you get above the treelined on the moment, it turned into more of a tundra and we could finally s a bunch of marmots (probably my new favorite animal btw.).
On the way up, I had to pay a lot of attention to what my body was telling me. Slow down, breathe, consume sugar, gulp water. Because of this I paced myself. Slow and steady, the goal was to get to the peak, not set a record.
What a great name. Marketing did a good job with this one. On my way up, I kept hearing about ‘The Golden Steps’ and in my mind, they sound like this grandeous thing near the top. About the tree line, it must feel glorious to touch these steps, right? No.
What I found out is that these so-called steps where actually 3ft boulders stacked on each other, switching back and fourth at 13,300 ft. This was the point where I literally had to crawl up.
Summiting Pikes Peak. This is over 26 statues of liberties, almost 7 empire state buildings, or 3 Burj Khalifa’s. Summit the peak was an emotional moment. After 11 hours hiking up a trail, getting blisters on my feet, getting tunnel vision, losing feelings in my fingertips, and getting snowed on after sweating from the 90* sun, I didn’t know how to feel. It was just pure emotion. I started to tear up a little bit and I don’t know if I have ever felt more accomplished. I did something nearly everyone told me I couldn’t, and really shouldn’t have done. That was my first hike over 5 miles and more than a 1000 ft of elevation, and I later found out that pike’s peak is one of the harder 14ers to get up, so I feel rightfully accomplished in that since.
Without MaryAnn I’m not sure if I would have ever made it. Thankfully we had a comparable pace and she was able to help through climbing the mountain physically and emotionally. Her family was great, and I got to meet them at the top and they very kindly gave me a ride back down to their car, even though they were running a couple hours behind schedule. MaryAnn and I took a photo together at the top and hopefully shell send that to me soon!
The longest and highest elevation 14ers, although not technically the most difficult, for the most part the path was clearly defined the entire way, and it was just a matter of walking, step after step.
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