I told Sean back in March that I wanted to hike to the top of Pikes Peak. I still can't believe we did it... we made it to the top on July 14, 2010! Our friends, Luke and Allison, were interested too and it was so much fun to have them along.
We left about 11am on July 13th. Poor Allison had to work the night shift the night before, so she laid down for a few hours before we hit the trail. Unfortunately, that was the hottest day so far in Colorado Springs (and we had a late start). The first part of Barr Trail, is one of the hardest parts... it's really steep and has tons of switchbacks. Not to mention getting used to the backpacks. Sean's was about 50 lbs and mine was about 20 lbs. (Crazy how much water weights!!)
After about 4 hours of hiking we made it to Barr Camp. It's an interesting place, you can rent "cabins", buy food, and chat with the family that lives there year-round. (Interesting life for them, they hike the trail the same as us to get there, and have to hike 1.5 miles to the Cog railroad tracks to get supplies when needed. Very nice family though... we talked to Teresa a lot.) Teresa told us of a great open space, great for setting up camp, it was about a quarter mile up the trail past Barr Camp. We found it and it was breath-taking. We had to cross a little stream to get to it, it was a good distance from the trail, and had the best view of Pikes Peak. We quickly set up tents, gathered firewood, purified more drinking water from the stream, hung all our (other than dinner) food from a tree downwind (to keep the bears and mountain lions away), then sat around the fire and relaxed. We had surprisingly good freeze dried camp food and then made some smores. :) We called it a night around 10pm and were all excited about the summit the next day.
The night was rough, I don't think anyone slept well. It was cold and really windy, and I was paranoid about all the bear stories Luke told around the campfire... the last thing I wanted to do was get out of my sleeping bag and hike far away from the tent to pee, so the bears wouldn't smell the pheromones and hunt us down! Sean and I both had the same memories that night: crazy, tent rattling wind, followed by a calm when you would hear the stream by our tent, then more wind, etc, etc... Really, I was just happy I didn't hear a bear sniffing around our tent. At 5am Bob (bright orange ball) got us up for the day. We were all moving slow, but finally packed up camp, cut our food down, purified enough stream water to get us to the summit, made a freeze-dried eggs and bacon meal, and hit the trail again at 10am. This time it was cold out.
We all made great time on the trail on day 2. I think camping helped get us all acclimated to the altitude (we've already climbed about 4000 ft at that point). We rested a lot along the way and pushed on. Once we got above the treeline, the views were incredible! And the air was thin, it was like breathing through a straw. Those miles were tough too, the trail at that point was gravel and sand, it killed our already tired legs. Then we got to the dreaded 16 Golden Stairs, hard... that's all I've got to say. Really, really hard. There was nothing golden (expect Sean peed there) or 16 in nature there... just climbing endless (again, not 16) rocks. But after that, and after 4.5 hours of hiking, we were done! It was awesome to finish something so hard, especially on my own merit.
On top, lots of people took our pictures as we hiked up.. they also stopped us to ask if we actually hiked up the whole way. We went inside and ate (had the well-known doughnut at 14,000 ft) and waited 3 hours for the cog railroad to have enough space to take us back down the mountain. On the cog, we stunk it up... the poor man beside us put his window down (even though it was freezing)!
After making it down the cog, we made arrangements with Luke and Allison to meet later at Nosh, our favorite restaurant to celebrate. :)
We didn't see much wildlife on the hike, lots of chipmunks, squirrels, a mean bird swooping us (I think we were close to her nest?), and one marmot near the golden stairs. I really wanted to see the bighorn sheep, but no luck. There was a brown bear on the cog tracks on the way down, but we didn't get to see him.
We did see a lot of other hikers on the trail! Most of the people were dropped off at the top of the mountain and walked down, others hiked it in one day so all they had to carry was a camelback. We didn't see anyone hiking up with packs like us. Needless to say, we are all pretty proud of ourselves for making it all 12.6 miles and 7300' with weight on our backs!
