Jaci Dawn

My husband turned 55 when we were in Colorado Springs. We rode the historic Pike’s Peak Cog Railway for his birthday. We were very lucky that it was even open, but life was starting to return to parts of Colorado Springs. You still couldn’t drive out Hwy 24 past Manitou Springs, but there was some hope on the horizon.

Levi really wanted to hike up the mountain with his dad (I think it was a form of delayed revenge for some of the hikes we took him on when he was a kid), but he settled for riding the train up. His father loves trains so this was pretty special.

There was a little waiting around with the toddlers, which is always entertaining.

Justin wasn’t interested in the history or the how-it-works, he just wanted to see the choo-choo and to ride on it. Someone has told him the story of the Little Engine That Could because his mantra for the day was, “I think I can… I can! I can!”

“Is that train here yet?”

This child is dangerous! He tried to climb out the window of the moving train several times. He’s slippery. I do not know how my son hangs on to him.

But while we were waiting for our ride, he was my buddy. And he wanted that train there, NOW.

You start at 6571 feet in elevation, which is about the same elevation as Ely, Nevada, where I went to high school. That’s also about 6,271 feet higher than where I currently live. The train climbs to the peak at 14, 110 feet: nosebleed level. Quite a ways above Timberline (approximately 11,500 feet) and up into “Altitude sickness” level. You aren’t supposed to take infants up to that elevation but no one mentioned this to us as we loaded Korinne into the train with us.

It’s OK – she handled the sudden change in altitude better than I did, and I was drinking plenty of fluids. I experienced a mild case of dizziness at the summit. Whoo! Kind of like when you get off of a merry-go-round too suddenly.

Several sections of the railway are on a 25% grade, which is why they turned to the unique cog system. The tracks look normal but going up the middle of them is a unique “rack” rail that the gear under the train (the cog) catches to pull itself up (or slow itself down on the descent). The train doesn’t move very fast, but that’s the beauty of the ride: you get to see everything!

We were stopped when I took the photo of the butterfly. You get to stop and wait while the other train goes up or down past you. Our ride was the last one of the day, so we only had to stop on the ascent for the descending train ahead of us.

I wanted to know more about the flora, but our guide had a rehearsed spiel that included a number of lame jokes and a lot of history, but nothing on the wildflowers, birds or trees. That omission was unfortunate because we spied Bristlecone pines (some of these can be as old as 2,000 years) and there was an amazing array of spring wildflowers as we entered the Timberline zone (spring comes late at that altitude). Unfortunately for my camera, we were moving when we passed the pretty purples, blues, reds and yellows and they petered out long before we reached the summit, which is quite barren of plant life.

I think this was Levi’s favorite part: the building that looks like it is leaning, but it is the train on the tracks and an optical illusion. The building is level.

We managed to scatter a herd of Rocky Mountain Bighorn Sheep on the ascent, and being on the uphill side allowed me to get some great shots of their flight over the rocks.

Two ewes and three kids.

(This is a little like Hidden Pictures!)

Three ewes and one kid (can you see it?)

Three ewes and TWO kids (one got confused and came back down, I think).

Three ewes, one kid and one ewe butt.

Three ewes and two kids.

I swear these are in sequence. I have no idea how the numbers kept changing when the sheep should have been disappearing over the rocks. Those darn kids! Playing when they should be running!

My son’s second-favorite view: when the world suddenly drops away from the train. You’re looking down the mountain and out at the Rocky Mountains. It is pretty darn spectacular.

This is the only photo I took at the top. Katharine Lee Bates ascended Pike’s Peak in 1895 and was so inspired that she wrote a poem she titled “Pike’s Peak”. The poem was later set to music composed by Samuel A. Ward.

You know the words. We call the song “America, the Beautiful.”

Our time on the summit was strange. We had twenty minutes. Don wanted to walk the summit and take photos. I had a three-year old buddy. Kaci had a hungry infant. Levi had Micah. Justin took me by the hand and we wandered around (I actually got dizzy and fell, the extent of my Altitude sickness experience. More like oxygen deprived ditzy grandma stuff). We even made a foray into the women’s restroom so Justin could relive himself (he’s gonna kill me when he’s old enough to read that!). Mostly, we tried walking uphill and chanting, “I think I can, I think I can, I think I can… I can! I can!”

Micah was so bored by the time we headed down! We switched places with other tourists so we could see a different view from the train, so we were now on the down-hill side. Micah was unimpressed: he only wanted to climb out that window.

“I’m Joe Cool! Set me FREE!”

And – score with a nice telephoto lens: the Yellow-bellied Marmot came out to play! Ain’t he cool?

All in all, it was a sweet ride and a perfect way to celebrate Don’s 55th birthday.