We decided to go up Pike’s Peak when my dad was in town. Me working in the railroad industry was immediately attracted to the Pike’s Peak Cog Railway. We made our reservations and heading down to Colorado Springs to ride the train up the mountain. During the drive down, we could see snow blowing off of the top of Pike’s Peak in the wind. It was very gusty. Unfortunately, this proved to be a problem for us.
The train couldn’t go all the way to the summit (14,110 ft). The winds when we got to about Windy Point (12,129 ft) were incredible. The windows on the train banged in their frames and the train rocked back and forth. Crazy. So it sucked that we couldn’t get out of the train and walk around at the top, but we could see this:
Cog trains are kind of neat. I won’t try to explain how they work; read here for details. I will say, though, that they can climb very steep grades, and the one we were on had front and back facing seats. We had back facing seats and had to fight gravity to not tumble face first into the people’s laps in front of us.
We made a stop on the way back down so we could walk around and use the “facilities” (a picnic table or two and a port-a-potty). I had a chance to take some obligatory pictures of the train and rail at that point.
