Just one and a half hours south of Denver, “America’s Mountain” towers over the city of Colorado Springs. Pike’s Peak is famous for a lot of different reasons.
There is a paved and maintained road up to the summit – the second highest paved road in North America – just behind the Mount Blue Sky Highway located a couple hours north. It is also on the very exclusive list of “Ultra Prominent” Peaks. These mountains are defined as summits with a topographic prominence of at least 1500 meters (4900 ft). Prominence is the vertical distance between the summit and the lowest point on the surrounding terrain that is higher than the summit. It essentially measures how distinct a peak is from its surroundings – and Pikes is one of the biggest, as you can clearly see from downtown Colorado Springs.
I decided to climb Pikes from the western side, via the Crag’s Campground trail. The route is about 15 miles with about 4,500 ft of elevation gain. The standard and most popular route up Pike’s, the Barr trail, is a much longer 25 mile route that usually requires camping.
My friend Mary said she wanted to join, so I told her I would be picking her up around 2:30am. She was unhappy, as she had a party to go to the night before, but sure enough, I picked her up around 3am, and we were on our way.
The Crags trail is very easy to follow the whole time. A few miles past the trailhead, it basically follows the paved road up the peak until the last 500 feet up the summit block. A class 2 scramble, which is also very easy to follow, takes you up the massive Pike’s Peak summit.
There are a few large mountains in the US that have dedicated infrastructure at the summit, and I have climbed most of them. It never gets any less weird. Upon gaining the summit, we were greeted by a large museum, with a full restaurant, large bathrooms, and even a solid wifi connection! It was such a strange feeling eating a cooked burger at 14,000 feet surrounded by tourists who drove or took the train up to the summit. So many people came up to us, all decked out in our hiking gear, and were totally shocked that we actually walked all the way up.
