Colorado: Heaven or Hell: Pikes Peak

Denver, Sunday morning. We are leaving Colorado tomorrow. In spite of the dull and rainy weather, it’s the only day we have left to make the ascent of the most visited mountain in North America: Pikes Peak, which has 500,000 visitors yearly.

Located South of Denver, near Colorado Springs, Pikes Peak awaits us. We never thought that the peak could offer such a breathtaking sound and light show, that would remain engraved in our memories eternally.

The Pikes Peak Highway, a winding road to say the least, so bumpy that many visitors turn back before getting to the top: twenty-two miles and two hours of otherwise pure happiness before reaching the height of 14,100 ft and Heaven or Hell … depending on the weather. When the weather is pleasant, you can see the Rocky Mountains in the North and the city of Denver in the South.



-- Not recommended for babies less than three month old or people suffering from cardiac
and respiratory problems.
-- Lack of oxygen may cause headache, dizziness and shortness of breath
-- In case of thunderstorm: take shelter or RETURN TO YOUR CAR IMMEDIATELY.

Our adventure gets complicated when we get to 13,000 ft, more precisely at the Devil’s Playground: the road becomes downright infernal; narrow, sinuous, hazardous. It is pouring rain, until we reach the summit which is fogged in.

At Little Pikes Peak (13,500 ft) our dog TouFou begins breathing with difficulty. The thunder is rumbling. TouFou is scared, so am I. Brian focuses on the road. Several cars are turning back. We carry on. I am frightened but I won’t give up. We reach the top, the visibility is nil. We are not surrounded by clouds, we are within the clouds. The Cyclops are doing a good job - lightning bursts out all around us. The thunderstorm is hallucinating. It is so fantastic that we forget it is unsafe to be out of the car. We have a ringside seat to admire the show which lasts 4-5 minutes. Soaked, tired, excited, we finally return to our car.



The descent after the magnetic release was spectacular; we could admire Colorado from a hundred miles. That night, when we reached Golden, a suburb of Denver, in a beautiful RV park, the Dakota Ridge RV Park, TouFou snored… he did.

N.B.: it was not very bright of us to stay outside the car in the middle of a thunderstorm, but it was so tempting. If you ever happen to go to the top of Pikes Peak, don’t do what we did, in case of a thunderstorm observe the warning:

STAYING IN YOUR CAR IS A SAFER OPTION THAN REMAINING OUTSIDE.