Pike(1)s Peak Highway is 19 miles with over 150 turns(2), and at the top, you get to turn around and ride back down. I’ve been wanting to ride up this mountain since buying my first motorcycle, and now with fuel injection and sticky street tires on the Monster we had to make it happen.
The long weekend started Thursday night with a Beatles cover band playing at Red Rocks. After a leisurely morning, Megan and I left midday Friday, towing the bike down HWY 67 to avoid some traffic already clogging the Front Range. While this was intended to be a bike trip, Ducati Monsters are not built for two over long distances, so we pulled the bike down to Rampart Range and planned to ride from there Saturday morning.
We found a good site off of Rampart Range Road and Forest Road 314 to camp for the night with surprisingly few people sighted on the way in. The location was good, but the amount of litter was the worst I have come across in any National Forest, anywhere. After getting back I commented on this to a coworker who grew up in nearby Woodland Park and he explained it by mentioning it is a popular area for high school kids to party. We did our best to clean our site at least, picking up a crate full of trash before setting camp.
Friday night we enjoyed excellent weather and a tasty dinner of canned chili and saltine crackers. Afterward, with our wedding upcoming, Megan and I had a small fire and wrote most of our wedding vows, before turning in to enjoy a great night sleep with our new camping airbed. Saturday morning after making coffee and breaking camp we unloaded the bike once back on pavement and made it to destination #1, McDonalds. Stomachs and gas tank filled, we rode off and were shortly at the gate house for Pikes Peak Highway.
The first 3 miles were newly paved with asphalt which was a blast and I think due to some smoke in the area due to wildfires in Washington and Oregon traffic was very sparse. We took the 25 mph speed limit under advisement and had a great time. A few miles in we stopped at Glen Cove Inn, to stretch and look at all the trinkets I would not like to own. It was worth it though since we noticed the shop sells t-shirts for ‘Pikes Peak 14,115 ft.’ and ‘Pikes Peak 14,110 ft.’! Ha.
Above the Inn the road got steeper with sharper switchbacks and my bike began to noticeably loose more power as the air got less dense. We stopped a few times for photos and to get some free road ahead after catching traffic but were soon at the top. It was unlike any 14er summit I have been on, what with the arriving train, parking lot, summit house lodge, and binocular stands, but it was very cool. Despite the smoke, we had reasonable views of Colorado Springs and the surrounding mountains; views of Denver sadly though were lost in the particulate matter. The summit house shop did manage to sell us (Megan) one trinket, and two doughnuts (Jon and Megan), but after a short while up top we were back on the bike heading back down.
Overall it was a great trip. The ride down was just as fun and camping out the night before made for a great weekend.
1 Where is the apostrope? – I thought this was interesting, the mountain was named after Zubulon Pike after all…
pikespeak.us.com – In the early days, it was called (and spelled) “Pike’s Peak.” However, in 1891, the U.S. Board on Geographic Names recommended against the use of apostrophes in geographic names, and the possessive apostrophe was removed from all official references. If that wasn’t enough, the Colorado state legislature passed a law in 1978 requiring the use of “Pikes Peak.”
2 I didn’t count but a few sources list 156 and 162 turns on the trip to the top.