How to Visit Pikes Peak, Colorado- The Ultimate Guide!

We just drove to the top of Pikes Peak and rode the cog train down and there are actually four ways to summit Pikes Peak and today we want to share with you the things we know to help you have an amazing trip to Pikes Peak. We're Matt and Cheryl with We're in the Rockies and our mission is to help you have a great trip to the west. So first thing to know about Pikes Peak it is a 14er that means it is over 14,000 feet high. Colorado has several mountain peaks that are over 14,000 feet but two of them you can actually drive to the top. One is Mount Blue Sky and one is Pikes Peak. We did Mount Blue Sky last year, we did Pikes Peak this year so we have a pretty fun little comparison there. By the way those are the two highest roads in the United States. So Mount Blue Sky is about 20 feet higher than Pikes Peak so it claims the title of the highest road but they're both very similar experiences and they're so high and memorable to be up there it's incredible. And we actually have a video on Mount Blue Sky too so if you're wanting to see like which one's the right one for you you should check it out. Yeah. All right next one is driving to the peak. It's a 20 mile road to the top of the peak and it's fun because there's little mile markers each way and look at things and they'll kind of tell you what's going on. Here's what you need to know if you're going to drive up to the top of Pikes Peak. First of all you need a reservation. This is a popular enough activity they need to to kind of limit or at least spread out how people visit the peak. So you need a reservation you get that online. They actually have a website I don't think they have a website we'll put it in the description here because it is run through the city and the forest service some combination is a little weird. But the reservation doesn't cost that much I think it's only two dollars but then you also need a day pass and the day pass is fifteen dollars per person so for us to drive up there cost us I think about thirty two dollars to do that so 15 each plus the reservation. Now let's talk about the experience of driving to the top. These are pretty intense experiences now most of the way up for about maybe the first 12 miles or so you're in kind of the forest in the foothills of the mountain so that's not actually all that scary but once you get up above the forest above the tree line you can get some pretty intense switchbacks. Now Cheryl was riding on most of those on the edge you know I was driving so I was closer to the middle line so why don't you let them know how that was like. Oh it was freaking scary um yeah it was really scary and I mean the road is so steep that you do feel like you're climbing to the sky and then there are no barriers on the side I mean it's just. There are some spots that are just bare yeah yeah so so she we ended up both driving up there and then Cheryl took the train down. I didn't want to drive down. Yeah she went on the way down there were a couple of intense spots where you're you're kind of on the edge there with no guardrails. Overall though I don't actually think it's all that scary but it is definitely something to be aware of it can be intense and we had our moments for sure. Yes but there are other ways besides driving to the top that we're going to talk about later on in this video. You know people ask well how many people have died on this road because legit as you were driving up this road you picture your car rolling down to your demise and there have actually been 70 deaths over 70 deaths on the Pikes Peak Road but it's not from the reason you would think. The most dangerous thing about the Pikes Peak Road though is the weather changes you know this is up high high high and mountain storms come in really quickly and it you know there's signs around to be aware of lightning and thunderstorms and also the altitude the altitude is legitimate like it's hard for your body to adjust to being 14,000 feet in the air. And I think you're going up about 6,000 feet I don't know if we have the stats here but from where you start to where you finish it's about 6,000 feet gain that's a lot and your body needs to adjust for that. Okay now let's talk about the biggest reason or the biggest cause of death on Pikes Peak which is the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb also known as the Race to the Clouds. This is a 12.42 mile race with 156 turns reaching the summit of 14,115 feet. They race it! So insane and it started in 1916 so this has been going on for over 100 years I cannot believe this but there have been some I can see how this could happen if you were driving high speeds there are people that do fall off the ledge during this crazy crazy race. I think the record is about eight minutes if I remember right and the most recent death during that race was in 2015. Okay next up is that Pikes Peak slogan is that they are America's Mountain and so part of the reason why how they got that nickname at the top you'll see a memorial to Catherine Bates who wrote America the Beautiful and she wrote it after she summited Pikes Peak and I'm not sure how she got up to the top whether she took the train or hiked but when she was up there she looked out over the vast countryside and wrote America the Beautiful which is pretty cool. Next thing to know about Pikes Peak is that you can take a cog train to the top you can take this from Montitude Springs right here in Colorado that's where we're standing right now is in the park of Montitude Springs it's a little less crazy here than it is at the train station but from the train it is about a nine mile trip up it takes about an hour about the same amount of time it takes to drive it. That was a really cool experience because the train starts off through a really rocky area and the rocks are pretty and they're cool and then the last 2,000 feet of the climb you have these amazing views of the canyon below like you can see the lakes I saw a couple fat marmots I saw a couple deer on the way it was pretty neat I do have to say though like with this train where you sit makes a huge difference if you're on the side of the train as the ticket booth like just notice when you're booking your tickets you don't want that side as the same as a ticket booth you want the other side because if you're just on the side of the ticket booth you're mostly looking at rocks right next to your window but if you're on the other side you get those canyon views it's really something else I felt bad for the people on the other side of the train. You rode it down and you sat on the correct side. Yes I did. Okay and was it a scary ride down? No the ride wasn't scary at all so it's a cog train so it's the this is the longest running cog train in the United States it's the highest cog train and the longest trail so it's like the number one in several things because it seems like everything is number one in Colorado everything is the highest yes but but oh yeah and just every attraction every attraction has to be the best something but like this one legit is like number one in several things now if you are interested in Colorado we have an entire playlist we've done a couple of cool big road trips through Colorado we've done videos on a lot of the cool things to do here you can check out our playlist and lastly we actually have a guide how to visit Rocky Mountain National Park and a big guide on how to do Colorado so check those out if you're interested the nice conductor was nice and she walked up and down the train and she let us ask her questions and me having been on a train that derailed once asked her has this train ever derailed and she's like oh no never she's like maybe like the train station it gets a little unsteady but that's not a big deal she's like but remember she's like the tracks are for guidance on a cog train it the gears are in and it's pushing that train up the hill and something else that's really interesting about the cog train is it actually takes it longer to go down now if i had to choose between driving and the cog train i would say that the drive like is the adrenaline rush it is freaking scary and like you get better views if you're not the driver i feel bad that matt was driving and didn't get to like just take it all in but the train was also a great experience and it was different and it was pretty so both things were great and you know to do what we did you can't just go order your ticket that way you have to finagle with the conductor at the top and say hey do you have any room on the train and then they'll take your license and you have to buy your ticket when you get down but there were two other people sitting by me on the train that had also been the same thing as me and the reason why they wanted to write down was because they had done another way to get to the top of tykes peak by hiking it okay yeah those those little maniacs next to me by the way the guy was probably 20 years older than me so like tip of the hat to that dude um they had they had summited tykes peak and they said it took them 10 hours to do it was like around a 12 mile hike up here you know i am unsure if it's 14 miles to the top or what on the drive yes oh so the drive is about 20 it's about 20 um to get up there and there's there's mile markers along the way and uh there's kind of two main stops you can stop as much as you want for the overlooks and all that but there's about two main stops i wanted to add one thing by the way on the drive when i was coming down i saw bighorn sheep crossing in front of me that was so insanely cool i've seen a lot of bighorn sheep in my life but what was an unbelievable about it was they were crossing the road and going down this sheer mountain side i could not i just could not even wrap my mind around it that was awesome okay now fun fact here uh pikes peak is famous for the pikes peak gold rush in colorado this is like the main historical event in colorado that brought people here in 1859 uh these are the 59ers that came in search of gold it wasn't actually found at pikes peak it was a little ways away it was called the pikes peak gold rush a big famous historical event colorado so we've talked about three ways to get to the top the cog train you can drive to the top you can hike to the top if you're insane and then uh now before we talk about the fourth thing i want to just talk about what it's like at the top so once we got to the top it was surprisingly flat there's not like a peak that you think of it's really flat wide area that you can walk around with pathways all over out to the ledges so that you can look out and a couple of them there's ledges that kind of jut out so you can get out and get a more sheer view which is pretty cool a lot of boulders up there and then they have a big visitor center for you in the visitor center they've got the displays but the best thing about the visitor center first lots of flushing toilets okay basically from the entrance all the way up it's just nothing but pit toilets so if you need to use the bathroom you can but it's a pit toilet and there's no water but up top they've got drinking fountains they've got flushing toilets and they have a cafeteria that serves donuts donuts is like the thing to do yeah to get so i don't know why that is it's just everybody talks about getting the donuts at the top a couple people we talked to said they were not that good actually liked them i liked my donut and it was just a plain donut but they have some other food options that you can get when you're up there as well if you ride the cog train up to the top you only get about i think 30 or 40 minutes at the top so one of the things that happens is from my understanding everybody gets off the train and runs to the bathroom so the bathroom line can be long and then they run for the donuts as well and that line can be long so one of my friends who rode the train she said plan ahead go to the bathroom so that you don't have to go up at the top because then it'll give you more time to look around and still get your donuts and enjoy the experience so you're not just wasting time in line oh yeah and they will not let you bring food on the cog train or drinks yeah they were a little they were actually quite rude up at the top i'm not gonna lie they were pretty curt with us when we were asking them questions cheryl said though after she got on the train to come back down they were a lot nicer so very nice yes okay another fun fact about pike's peep is that there is an army research lab up at the top where they can study the effects of altitude on our soldiers it's just so unusual to be able to get up that high with that little effort so that's pretty cool all right now the last way to get to the top of pike's peak is to take a shuttle yeah now i looked up some stuff on the shuttle i kind of thought about it a little bit but ultimately decided i wanted to drive to the top because i wanted to see that experience compared to that blue sky but you can take a shuttle so look if you don't want to spend the money on the train and you don't want to drive because you're too scared you can take the shuttle you park about six or seven miles up the road which is still in that kind of foothill area and then you take the shuttle to the top nice thing about both the driving and the shuttle is that you can spend as much time at the top as you want you're not in a rush to turn around and come back down like you are with the train although in fairness i would say 30 to 40 minutes for us at the top was plenty about right you know so i think the train maybe you're not really rushed especially if you don't go to the bathroom but but there is a shuttle option for you if you want that driving experience without the driving experience well cheaper than the train the train is about 60 bucks the shuttle is about 30 per person yeah that includes the day pass and the shuttle fee yes right now we are in a town park in manitou springs manitou springs is at the base of pikes peak and we were going to film this video at the top of pikes peak while we were standing up there with these amazing views but then we kind of needed to rush to get back on the train to get down and it wasn't a good spot to shoot near the train so we're just in manitou springs by the way if you visit pikes peak you'll probably come through manitou springs check out the historic downtown and get something to eat it's not a bad little all right and if you want to know more about driving in colorado we have a great video the don'ts of driving in colorado you got to check out