Reaching Our Peak
We woke to a beautiful bright sunny day in Colorado Springs today. We had a swift pack up, some dried up scrambled eggs from the woeful breakfast buffet (it may be “America’s Best Value” but it has America’s worst breakfast!) and we drove up to Manitou Springs, ready to board the Cog Train that would take us to the very top of Pike’s Peak.
Sam and I had dressed in shorts and t-shirts – pretty summery – as the sun was beating down and it was really warm. As we were leaving the parking lot, we saw a family rugged up in scarves, beanies, snow jackets and boots all heading for the Cog Train. I asked politely if there was any reason they were so rugged up. Was there something we didn’t know? The rugged-up matriarch of the family told us it was just above zero at the top and only 39 degrees Fahrenheit! Sam did a quick conversion on his phone and worked out that’s a very cool 3.8 degrees Celsius. Yeah, that’s a bit cool. Probably not really shorts weather.
We tried to secure ourselves a seat on the 10 o’clock train but it was already full, along with the 11 o’clock and the 12 o’clock trains! We were put on standby and given a warning about the altitude and the possible effects on our bodies up there in the clouds. Luckily we knew what to expect in that regard, though weren’t looking forward to going back to all that dizziness. I ran back to the car and rifled through our bags to find the very few warm clothes we’d packed and just as I arrived at the ticket office, they called our number! We were the very last passengers they were able to squeeze in!
As we chugged away from the station it was a pretty slow old ascent but we were going up an extra 7,000 feet so it was better to do that gradually. We had the most gorgeous Japanese baby (Charlie) sitting next to us so he was keeping us entertained along the way. As we rose, the scenery became more and more sensational and changed the higher we got. To start with there were big rocky outcrops and forests of pine trees and cotton wood trees and then once we had risen above the tree line, the rocks were much more broken up and jagged and there were huge tracts of green grass that would have been the size of about 6 football fields! The grass flowed down to pretty little lakes and we saw so many more animals above tree line. The ground was constantly moving with beavers, badgers, squirrels, chipmunks and other unidentified little American mammals (all cute). We didn’t see any bears or mountain lions, which apparently do reside here in droves, but we did see a deer, a small consolation for Sam.
It was amazing when our train poked its little red nose up through the clouds. We hadn’t been able to see the very summit (the peak of Pike’s Peak) from the ground but bursting through the cloud layer we could see it in all its glory. It was like being in a plane, looking down at all the clouds below and pushing through into bright sunshine. There were patches of snow on the ground but the summit wasn’t covered in snow. We had a very chirpy conductor, Hannah (or how she pronounced it “Heee-ner”) on the Cog Train who was pointing out different things to see along the way. She told us that the Mountain’s namesake, Zebulon Montgomery Pike had spotted Pike’s Peak back in 1806 but he and his men – like us – had been wearing shorts at the time (their summer expedition gear) and decided it would be unwise to climb without their winter woolies. (The fact that they had no food just may have also contributed to their decision to head in another direction). Zeb did go on to explore extensively and the naming of Pike’s Peak bears witness to his efforts.
Climbing out of the train at the dizzying altitude of 14, 110 feet, the summit really was spectacular, not to mention FREEZING (so glad we put our jeans on) and the view was phenomenal! 360 degrees of glorious mountains, valleys and rivers and a thick blanket of cloud below. We could see all the Collegiate Mountains and some of the other “fourteeners”, of which there are 56 in Colorado. Pike’s Peak is the 31st tallest and we sure were high! We joined our fellow passengers and proceeded to take as many photos as we could manage in our time limit and as many as we could take without falling over from the all-familiar effects of altitude sickness!
Once we were back on lower ground we took the opportunity to explore the little town of Manitou Springs. It’s a really cute little place with quite a hippy feel. There are lots of crystal and candle shops and rainbows painted on the sides of the buildings. We stumbled upon “The Local First Grocer” where we were hoping to score some fresh fruit. Boy, did we come to the right place! They had every kind of fruit and vegetable you could dream of and walls of herbs (‘erbs), grains, cereals and barrels of ambiguous looking “green” drinks. The owner, a young, bearded hippy with a blonde ponytail spent at least 20 minutes expounding the virtues of “fully sprouted, hand grown, organic, fibrous cereals” and gave us a taste of all the different options he had for sale. He won us over and we had no choice other than to go away fully stocked with a new healthy array of grains and seeds to suck on. His favourite word was “trippy” and he spoke slowly using the word “man” a lot! He pointed out other girls in the store, over from “Cali”, that “were even making their own organic fully sprouted muesli man”. It was tow-tall-ee awesome man! We left with one last exhortation to spread the word and help to change the world, one little town at a time. Classic!
A couple of doors up we spotted an equally organic- looking coffee shop that actually sold salads that were completely savoury, with no creamy mayonnaise, oily sweet dressings or dried cranberries and candied nuts. It was a first! It was so nice to swap french fries and jack cheese for some really healthy tucker.
After a wander around Manitou Springs we were on our way to Breckenridge and buckled up for a couple of hours on the road. I’ve become the designated driver and Sam is the designated navigator. For those of you that know me, that’s just the way it had to be! I can’t navigate my way out of my own bedroom half the time.
Driving through great open fields on one straight road that we could see stretching all the way to the horizon in a perfect straight line, was incredible. There were mountains popping up sporadically and square wooden ranch gates every now and then but it was so vast and spacious. You could see for miles around and we were on the only road in sight. It was so beautiful. Now I know this has become a bit of a theme of our trip, but nature was calling again and there seriously wasn’t a servo in sight! The road didn’t even have a shoulder on either side, it just fell away so there was no possible way to pull over. With crossed-legs, we motored on until we came to the “South Park Mercantile” general store in the middle of NOWHERE! As we entered the barn-sized shop, light streaming into the dingy room revealing the swirling dust particles, a chair turned slowly and we were face-to-face with an elderly woman with shoulder length grey hair and a seriously strange eye that seemed to be bleeding and looking in the opposite direction of her other eye. She had a white fluffy dog in a bandana sitting on her lap and her shop was filled with relics from a bygone era. It was like something out of a movie! She had all sorts of things hanging from the ceiling, including a neon Budweiser sign and a blimp from the 1970s. She must have had stock from at least the past 6 decades and there was a section in the corner , next to the pitch forks and motor oil, full of musty old second hand clothes. I’d be guessing she didn’t have customers queuing up to get in! With one eye on her dog and her wonky eye trained on us, the slightly creepy woman pointed out where the rest rooms were up the back of the shop. They smelt like a septic tank and the walls were adorned with signs and dusty memorabilia. One of the signs read: ‘please don’t flush your cigarette butts down the toilet as they become soggy and hard to light’! On our way out, I told her the place should’ve been in the movies and she said “oh but it is!” I’m not surprised!
Happy to have made it out of there alive, we continued our journey to the beautiful town of Breckenrigdge. We are staying in a little condo with the most incredible uninterrupted views of the mountains, right our the window. Apparently in winter you can ski the 4 o’clock ski run right to the back door! It would be fun sitting on the verandah in winter just watching the skiers and snowboarders doing their thing. We are on the third floor (with no lift) and with the effects of the altitude dizziness still hanging around, we both felt like we were going to pass out after lugging the bags up two flights of stairs! Dinner at Bubba Gumps was fun and our waiter, Eugene from Muldova, challenged us on whether or not Canberra was actually the capital of Australia! It was a fun day!
