The Incline

Last Saturday while in Colorado Springs, Jess, Nick and myself too ourselves to face the incline. Some make it, some don't.

There is limited parking. We were not fortunate enough to get a spot. There are places to park way down the hill though.

Here is Nick getting the hand-held radios on the same channel. He got one and I got one. {The fastest and the slowest.}

Here you see the way to the bathrooms {off to the left} and the trail to hike down {on the right}.

After hiking up to the base of the trail {as seen here} I was already dead. My calves were burning.

The 3 brave souls.

Looking ahead.

Here is what the beginning part of the trail looks like. Looks easy, but it is not.

Nick {red shorts} ran up it for a bit. 28 minutes he was at the top, top. The top seen here isn't really the top. It's false summit.

I was taking my time up this beast, stopping at most of the shade spots till I felt normal before continuing on. There were all kinds of people with different goals talking with each other. Two guys kept repeating "slow and steady" very focused as they walked up. There was a crazy drill Sargent mom and her 10 year old daughter. She kept telling/yelling to her daughter to breath through her nose. "I don't hear you breathing through your nose, breathe!" That was interesting. Lots of people had their doggies going up with them. Every shade spot they came upon the dogs would go lay down. Some people carried their dogs up. One guy was talking to people about the time he was doing the incline and Lance Armstrong was doing it as well. The guy said that Lance was just going up it with no problems commenting on the nice views and trucking along like it was nothing.

So once Nick made it to the top, he radioed to me - I wasn't even half way up. So he enjoyed the view for a bit and made his way down to me passing Jess on his way and handing off the radio. Once he reached me, we hiked up to the halfway point. Meanwhile, Jess had made it to the top and came back down to where we were and we headed down Barr trail. Going down the incline isn't as smart as taking Barr trail back down.

This crazy part is crazy. The guy in the lower right corner of the pic had a fun dog that hung out with me for a bit.

We went down Barr trail and I had a miserable time. Let me just say - I drank LOTS of water and it all wanted to come out. After about an hour, I was relived.

For anyone who wants to go on this trail, take lots of water and maybe a snack bar. There were some, lots, of people that didn't take water and they were having a hard time. If you get tired, you could fall back and all the way down you could go. Not fun.

We got down to the car and decided to go to the Garden of the Gods...