Looking for a little exercise? How about a mile-long flight of 2,744 stairs made of railroad ties, starting at an elevation of 6,530 feet and topping out at 8,500 feet with a slope averaging 41% and at times, 68%.
This is Colorado’s Manitou Incline and it’s said a typical hiker gets to the top in about two hours. Hmm …
… but then it’s another couple of hours to get back down via an alternate trail (the 3-mile-long Barr Trail). This because the Incline is one-way up, with several “bailout” points for leaving the Incline and returning via a different trail. A good thing, one hiker noted, because you would destroy your knees trying to go down the Incline.
(Before you start you should know it’s about 400 steps to the first bailout point according to another website, Trails and Open Spaces, which also has a video.)
The Manitou Incline is near Colorado Springs, and if simply reading about it hasn’t exhausted you, how ’bout a few photos? These are from AllTrails.com, where you can sign up for a free trial (no payment info required) and browse more than 21,000 images uploaded by intrepid hikers who’ve been there.
A bit of history from the Colorado Springs Pioneer Museum:
Before the Incline became a popular hiking trail it first functioned as a 3-foot narrow gauge funicular railway built in 1907. The railway serviced a hydroelectric plant and gravity-fed waterline that provided water to both Manitou and Colorado Springs. After several years, the track was sold to Dr. Newton Brumbach who turned the Manitou and Pikes Peak Railway into a tourist attraction. Advertisements for the Incline boasted a 16-minute ride to the top that promised the visitor the opportunity to behold “scenic splendors” and claimed to be the “longest and highest incline on the globe.”
A rockslide in 1990 destroyed a large portion of the railway exposing rebar and mangling the track. The Incline was then closed and was not repaired.
The Incline was officially reopened as a tourist attraction/challenge on February 1, 2013. It draws visitors from around the world and has become popular as a training location for elite athletes and military.
More photos from AllTrails:
There’s a video on the Incline’s website and a live webcam on the Cog Railway site.
Click the image below for the live cam and look for tiny hikers on the Incline (if it’s dark, remember, Colorado is on Mountain Time, but you may see lights from people still on the way up):
Pfft, it’s only a mile to the top, right? Ready to go?
Um, you go ahead. I’ll wait in the parking lot.
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Header image: AllTrails/Sabrina Cester
It hurts my knees just to look at the pictures.
Mine too.
oh, wow
I’m exhausted from just writing about it!
My knees are crying just thinking about this.
I wonder if they have someone to haul you down if your knees give out at some point. I imagine more than one flatlander has underestimated the difficulty/altitude.
From what you wrote, there is no going down, only up and then down bail-out trails. I have this ugly image of people being hauled up the steps and then onto a side trail as they are rescued.
Yep, that’s exactly what I was imagining — me, or someone, collapsing somewhere between bailout points, desperately needing help to get up and off those steps.
It’s a marvellous thing – great thinking to make it into a training place.
I can rave on because there’s less than zero likelihood of my ever sighting it.
(Not 0%, -10000%, -700% … [grin])
Colorado Springs hosts an Olympic training camp and it seems like a no-brainer to send athletes to the Incline for strength and stamina training. I imagine it draws from all over the area year ’round for the real masochists. Longs Peak was my “Incline” almost 50 years ago. Way past doing anything like that again.
There was a time . . . But my incline days have declined.
Yep, I hear that!