Saturday, July 10, 2010

Pikes Peak or Bust

On Wednesday, the whole family traveled 14,110 feet up Pikes Peak in the Cog railway train named the Aspen.  The train ride had 25 degree inclines at some points, but the ride was breathtaking.  The route we traveled up had tons of history and we got to see all sorts of cool natural sections of the mountains others don't get to see. 

Here's us on the train.





This is what our rail car looked like as it was going up the mountain.



There is a little town, population 2, that is a hydroelectric station.  They have to drive 60 miles to the closest grocery store on dirt roads that probably get snowed over during winter.

We saw an old community with the remains of a couple old cabins still there. 

We also passed the tree line (pictured here)  and saw two trees that were over 1000 and 2000 years old.

And saw amazing scenary


We also observed huge amounts of tundra, with grass so delicate that we could still see the wagon wheel marks from centuries ago.

We saw snow still on the mountains in pockets, which is not rare at this time of year.

We spent about 40 minutes at the peak.  The peak store is world famous for their donuts so we got some donuts and coffee to warm us up.  It was only 43 degrees at the top but it was very comfortable.

We were told not to spend more than 40 minutes there because of altitude sickness risks.  It was HARD to breathe up there!  Unfortunately we didn't get any pictures from the peak We were completely enveloped in a cloud while we were there.  Even with that it was worth the trip.  The trip was amazing!

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