The Cog and the Peak

There’s just not enough superlatives for today’s’ adventure. We took the Cog Railway to Pike’s Peak.

In many places the train climbs 25 feet up for every 100 feet forward. The trains we’re familiar with would just spin their wheels on a grade this steep. So they put a track with rack of square teeth in between the two tracks you expect to see. The locomotive, then, engages this track with wheels that have square teeth. Works like two gears and the locomotive just climbs right up the steep grade without slipping.

This was a spectacular trip. So moving that Katharine Lee Bates penned “America the Beautiful” after her trip. She didn’t have the advantage of the Cog Railway and traveled to the top in a prairie wagon. The wagon was pulled half way up by two horses. Two mules then relieved the horses. When she arrived at the top “…It was then and there, as I was looking out over the sea-like expanse of fertile country spreading away so far under those ample skies, that the opening lines of the hymn floated into my mind." Although not a poet, I can fully understand what she felt.

For our trip, we boarded the train in summer like weather. The sky was a deep blue with large billowy white clouds. These conditions couldn’t have been better for what we were about to see. The train pulled away from the boarding area slowly—it goes about nine miles per hour. We were to climb to the 14,110-foot peak in over an hour.

The first part of the trip was merely interesting. We were walled in on both sides with tree covered granite cliffs. There were occasional sites like abandoned trapping cabins and small water falls. The real sites started as we climbed above the peaks of the small hills in which we started. We could start to see glimpses of Colorado Springs below. The sight was similar to what you see taking off in an airplane. As we climbed higher, we were finally above all the surrounding hills and we could continuously see the expanse of the area below surrounded by ranges of hills. As we went even higher, we could start to see snow capped mountains beyond the hills which surrounded the land below.

At one point, we pulled onto a sidetrack to allow a descending train to pass. At another, we stopped to allow some passengers off. They would follow a trail back to the train station or hike to the peak.

This continued until we finally climbed above the tree line. Abruptly there were no more trees, just rocks and a very short Arctic grass but mostly rocks. Without the trees and shrubs, the rocks looked like the results of massive blasting. They were a massive field of small rocks. I never suspected this by seeing them from below. The granite in these mountains is a porous and easily broken type. Each winter the ice in the cracks of the rocks causes them to break and, after all of these years, have made it look like a massive blasting area. We traveled upward above the tree line for another half an hour.

At the top you think you can see forever—mountain ranges, prairies, airports, other states. Absolutely beautiful and breathtaking, a wonderful day. You can get a glimpse of this at: http://www.springsgov.com/units/pikespeak/.

Tomorrow we’ll be moving a little south to Canon, Colorado.