PIKES PEAK!

The best part about being home is seeing Pikes Peak everyday! A friend once made a comment about my relationship/slight obsession with this wonderful mountain, and I will now confirm its truthfulness in this list,

The Top 20 Reasons Why if Pikes Peak were a Man, I Would Indeed be Kissing It Right Now:
(aka: Top 20 Reasons Why I Love Pikes Peak!)

1. You can see it from ANYWHERE! It is easily the most prominent purple mountain majesty for miles around!
2. It is named after someone named Zeb who, admittedly, never made it to the top, but really, Zeb? That's a pretty outrageous name.

3. It has grown over the years. The older signs and merchandise still say 14,110 feet, but now it's actually 14,115 ft. in elevation.

4. There are 4 ways to get to the top: the highway (a 26ish mile, 10$ drive), the cog railway (a guided 30$ adventure, jokes included), the Crags (a weeny trail up the back side), and Barr Trail (a free, gloriously wonderful 13 mile hike). We even used to tell our customers we would get catapulted or take a jet pack to the top. These, obviously, are lies. We would always just run.

5. There is a donut shop on top! What other fourteener do you know that sells the world's greatest donuts at the summit!?

6. Pikes Peak is marked on every world map I have yet encountered! That is so cool! There is a little corner of heaven that I'm so endeared to and it is marked on world maps!! When was the last time your childhood was marked on a world map!?

7. At the base, there is an old train track, now converted into a type of hiking trail, that goes STRAIGHT up the first mile of the mountain, lovingly called the Incline, and it is a BEAST, but you are also a beast if you hike up it. The picture below shows the summit peeking on the left, and the line you can see going up the right side of this picture is the Incline.

8. Pikes Peak employs the most wonderful people in the world! You know if you can a) drive many times up and down the same road with b) spend many hours in the same place with c) hide in cupboards with d) endure lightning and snow storms with and e) clean inches of grease from the grill with someone, you can surely be their dear friend! You only wish you knew Kim Webb whose passion is charity and Angie Jack who can sing like a larken!

9. Every year Pikes Peak has a race up the highway and tons of foreign people come and race up it in race cars. The usual hour and half drive for the relatively brave tourist takes these crazy people only 10 minutes!

10. The summit house on top treats its nauseous and oxygen lacking customers with the greatest care and to the most quality food. Want some water? There's dixie cups on top of that rusty water fountain over there! Want some food? You can pay way elevated prices (ha. pun.) for these wonderful hot dogs that have likely been sitting in the "boiling" water over there all day. (Note to customer; water takes a long time to boil at 14000 ft. Thus, hot dogs are usually not cooked, let alone hot). But, don't worry, the saltine crackers are free.

10. You can see EVERYTHING from Pikes Peak! It is so so so beautiful and the inspiration for a 2 second introduction to myself- "My name's Krista and i love mountain vistas!"

11.There are such wondrous places as Bob's Creek, No Name Creek, A-Frame, treeline, and the Cirque on the Peak. That is wonderful.

12. When you are on the Peak and there is a rainbow, you are really somewhere over the rainbow, because you are so high, you are looking over the top of it!

13. I played footsie with Death for an hour once on the Peak!!!!! That, even if you've heard it before, is a great story. I may soon make a blog of it. What a day.

14. Pikes Peak served as the inspiration for America the Beautiful, which is included in the hymn book. Tell me that doesn't make it pretty joyous.

15. The view of the city coming down from the mountain at night is enough to make some feel like they want to get engaged or fall in love.

16. Sometimes the wind blows so hard on top that you can see the snow swirling around the summit like a magical aura all the way from the city. And then sometimes it is so serene that it almost looks like a cardboard cutout.

17. Pikes Peak is photogenic. I have more pictures of Pikes Peak than most anything else, and in every single picture, it always looks beautiful!

18. Half way up the mountain at Barr Camp there is a quaint little cabin where the same lady has lived for as long as I've known. When she dies, I will live there. And I will also make pancakes for breakfast so when hikers come by, I can offer them some whole wheat health.

19. Every year there is a running race up Barr trail. The race going just up is the Ascent, and then up and down, run the next day, is the Marathon. This race has defined much of what I am and can do now because I bonded with my mom when I registered for it, spent a whole summer getting advice from veterans who would come to the summit house, slept every night dreaming about it, ran every day to train for it, and finally RAN it, which was glorious and hard and triumphant and wonderful and simply ebullient and I want to do it again and again like all the other crazy old people who run it!

20. Pikes Peak is part of my soul! Who doesn't feel endeared to their own soul!?

Here are some photographs of all things Pikes Peak. Every time I hike it, I take a picture like the one at the bottom left at that same place on the trail. The rest are just joyous pictures. Don't you feel 10% happier because of those 20 things!!? Maybe you don't, but I hope you enjoyed this!