Health & Exercise: Climbing Pikes Peak

So, we finally did it! We hiked Pike's Peak.  And it was... it just was.  It was awesome and difficult and long and crazy and so much more.
Let me explain, Pike's Peak is one of many Colorado 14-ers (A mountain over 14,000 ft).  The difficulty with Pikes Peak is that it is the greatest altitude change in Colorado.  It gains ~7,300 ft in elevation from the start of Barr Trail and is almost 13 miles up.  The average person takes around 8 hours to complete it.

It is broken down by most hikers into fourths.  The first fourth is the second most difficult which sucks since that is the start of your hike. We started at 5:50 a.m.  (before the sun was up) and made it a point to stop and take breaks even though we had energy.  We didn't want to burn out.

The second third is like just walking through woods, super easy and it comes out at the halfway point, called Barr Camp.  This was where we did our fastest miles was really enjoyable.  We spent much of our time enjoying the beautiful White Aspens and their brightly colored leaves.  It was a perfect first day of fall.

The third fourth is the third most difficult.  It doesn't involve much climbing over rocks, but it was a steady grade up the whole time.  By that point, all you want is to hit the tree line and feel like you are close to the top, since you know you are only halfway.  The White Aspens started becoming more scarce, but we could look down the valleys at them.

 

The fourth part of the journey was just terrible.  We
still had over 2,000 ft in elevation to gain and it was all climbing over rocks and staring down gorges.

But once we got to the top, we decided that are joints wouldn't handle the decent well, plus it would take hours more.  Doing a marathon length hike sounded awful and we were already tired. So we decided to take the Cog Railway down to the bottom.

  

Ultimately, we hiked 13 miles up in 7 hours 23 minutes and burned somewhere over 3,000 calories.