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John and I had intended on hiking overnight to Pikes Peak and back on this reunion tour.  One small problem kept us from completing our intended mission.  Kristin and I went rollerblading in The Garden of the Gods State Park a few days earlier and had a major crash.  This park has the steepest stuff I have ever tried to blade on.  We both had major raspberries on our backsides and there was no way I was going to survive hiking 20+ miles, full back pack.  John and I decided to hike with light packs to the Barr Camp and back.  We still hiked over 12 miles in about 8 hours.  

The trail we chose was the Barr Trail.   This is the main trail to hike up Pikes Peak. The trail starts at the cog railway, passes through Barr Campground. The first 3.5 miles are a solid climb with some technical hard spots. The next 2 miles climb gradually to Barr Campground.

Here is the poop on the trail from the Barr Camp Website:

The standard route to Barr Camp is a 6.8 mile hike up Barr trail. The total Trail to the summit is 12.6 miles, and is non-technical. It begins at 6,600 feet, and summits at 14,110 feet at the Top of Pikes Peak. Barr Camp is staffed year-round. 

Water may not be readily available. Filter water before drinking from mountain streams. Bring and drink plenty of water to help avoid many physical complications, especially in the winter.

There is an incline train that traverses the mountain leaving Manitou Springs for Pikes Peak.  It takes over 1-1/2 hours to get to the top.  You can see this train every now and again as you hike the trail.

One of the many scenic overlooks we came to on the hike.

This is the old incline train tracks.  You can see it in the picture below as a cut in the mountain on the right side pointing directly at Pikes Peak.

John on one of those many overlooks.

This picture shows some very threatening skies over the peak.  We were told this is a very dangerous place for lightening.  I am not sure why other than the fact that you do get above the tree line and the trees that are there are very short.  Someone said its because you are closer to the lightening.  I have a hard time believing being a few thousand feet closer to something traveling at 187,000 miles/sec makes any difference.

This is pretty much what the entire trail looked like except for the changes in elevation.  Sometimes the trail was very steep uphill, sometimes it was very steep downhill and sometimes it was rather flat, like this picture.

If you look closely you will see that our current elevation is 9800 feet and we are 1.5 miles from our destination of the Barr Camp.  Pikes Summit is 6.5 very steep miles ahead.

Just a nice rock formation.

We made it.

John and one of the full time staff of the camp.

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