Category: hiking

The Manitou Incline – 2768 Steps, all of them painful

Spoiler Alert: This is a long post so I thought it best to give the punch-line to start with. I MADE IT! And I’m still alive and in one piece. Just really sore.

I had a number of alternative titles for this post, and had a hard time deciding which was most appropriate

The Manitou Incline – Hiking for Masochists

The Manitou Incline – My Very Last Insane Hike

The Manitou Incline – Why?

The Manitou Incline – The Stairway to Not Heaven

The Old Man and the Stairs

Climbing the Manitou Incline has been on my bucket list for a while. I knew about it through all the years we lived in Colorado, but much like the Seven Falls and the Cave of the Winds, it was not a priority compared to all the other crazy things I did.

As always, a bit of history first. The Incline is the track of a cable tram, built in 1907 in support of a hydroelectric plant in Manitou Springs. It eventually became a tourist attraction until it was destroyed in 1990 by a rockslide. The rail path was eventually converted into the current hiking trail, which consists of wooden steps, 2768 of them, rising over 2000 feet from the base in about 1 mile. It tops out at 8590′ elevation. That’s very steep by the way. The top of the incline stairs has a link to the Barr Trail, which leads back to the starting point. So the overall round trip is about 5 miles. That does not seem so far until you do it.

There is no charge for hiking the Incline, oddly enough. You just have to reserve a time slot since the city manages how many hikers are on the trail at once. Parking in Manitou Springs is always a problem since it is a major tourist attraction – there is parking close by the start of the trail, but it is almost all reserved for the cog railroad to Pikes Peak or for hikers on the Barr Trail. The city has two larger parking lots further away, but has a free shuttle bus which drop you off near the trail head. The lots are reasonably priced.

My reservation was at 11AM, but with light Sunday traffic, I got to the parking lot early. While waiting for the shuttle, I realized that the big gash on the mountain side down the street was the Incline. It looked really steep.

Manitou Springs, Colorado — The Incline in the distance

The bus was packed with hikers, most of whom were doing the Incline. As you can tell from the blue sky in the photo, it was a perfect Colorado fall day. Things were looking up. Literally.

The shuttle drops you off at the cog rail station, and you have a short uphill walk to the trail head following the signage. You first walk by a small shop, which had souvenirs, Incline themed t-shirts, snacks and best of all, those wonderful fruit popsicles I discovered at the Seven Falls. Yum. I was definitely going to make a stop when I was finished with the climb. Wishful thinking.

I was expecting to find someone checking reservations at the base of the trail – there were a lot of climbers milling around, but once we realized the little check-in building was closed, everyone just started up. The trail head was obvious.

The sign at the bottom indicates the distances, elevation and the three bail-out points along the trail. Looking up at the steep climb, I took note of the last bail-outs. I was getting nervous about this – it looked really steep, and that was just to the false summit you see from that point. There was more over the horizon. I also noticed at that point the little marker on the first step – there is a number marker every 100 steps. Gives you something to look forward to. Or maybe they do that to get you depressed about how many you have left to climb. At this point, there were 2767 to go. Boo.

A few comments about the trail and the steps. From what you can tell in the photo of the trail head, you have lots of standard sized railroad timbers evenly spaced with some dirt packed in between. Easy walking, right? Wrong. That nice consistency lasted for about the first 100 steps. After that, as the slope varies between steep, very steep and ridiculously steep, the spacing decreases sometimes to inches, the size of the timbers varies and frequently, the steps are made of two timbers. As you move upslope, there are also water channels built of stacked timbers with a steel grating on top. What this all means is that it is that there is no consistency in what you are traveling on, so it is almost impossible to develop a routine gait. You might be walking along on steps spaced a foot apart, then reach a double step with a grate to step across, followed by steep, smaller timbers spaced an inch apart.

For me, and this is all about me of course, this was really difficult. With my big size 13 feet and poor balance, the inconsistent spacing and size made for a miserable climb. I was using one hiking pole, for balance and to push off of which helped a lot, but on the steeper section, I wound up crabbing up either with one hand or in some cases, climbing with all fours. I was not alone in doing that on the steep sections.

OK, now for some pictures and a blow-by-blow description of my journey up the stairs

The starting elevation was about 6200’ which I was used to after a week at altitude and doing some hiking. So I made pretty good progress at first where the steps were fairly consistent. I was snapping away with my phone, and took a picture of each step marker so I could document my progress.

The grade was starting to increase after a few hundred steps, but I made it to 500 in 22 minutes. Not too bad given the altitude. I was encouraged at that point. This was also the first bailout point. Not interested.

The slope started increasing, as was the elevation of course, and I made it though the next 300 steps in another 16 minutes. I was not setting a speed record, but I was keeping up a good pace. I did notice that most all the other climbers (I’m going to refer to this as a climb, not a hike) were much younger than me….a lot younger. Most of the crowd were in their 20’s, wearing running skins. Some were running up the stairs and even worse, there were people RUNNING DOWN the stairs. I was assuming most everyone would be taking the long Barr Trail back down.

At this point, the trail became much steeper, and the step spacing and height more inconsistent. The elevation gain was also much more obvious – at first, I was doing about 30 or 40 steps between resting a few minutes. Pretty soon, that was down to about 20. And eventually 10.

I reached step 1200 in another 16 minutes, still trucking along at a reasonable pace – almost 19 steps per minute. I started out at close to 23, so not so bad. The steps were still consistent, but the trail ahead was getting steeper, and you could see everyone was laboring a bit. At step 1300, there was another bail out point – this was the last one that went off to a side trail, which went directly down to the starting point. After this, the bailouts connected to the longer Barr Trail.

You can see one of those water channels with the steel grating. These were more frequent the higher we climbed. I really disliked them.

At step 1500, my rate was dropping, down to 12/minute, and 1600, even worse at 10/minute. It was getting really steep, the altitude higher, and my energy levels much lower.

You can see how steep it was getting at this point. I was beginning to doubt my conditioning (and sanity) and thinking about the last bail-out spot which was coming up soon.

When I reached the bail-out, at 1850 steps, I was down to a 7/minute rate since I was taking breathers every few steps. I saw someone pull out one of those small oxygen canisters, and wish I had bought one or two. The bail-out was where you join up with the Barr Trail, so you have an hour hike back down. There was even a nice bench to sit on to ponder my future. It was a tough choice since I was more than half-way there, but more than half-way exhausted. I could hear Jan saying – head down idiot before your hurt yourself. But I decided to ignore my better half (and senseability) and truck on.

So now there was no going back, or at least no easy way. I’d have to work my way down the steep stairs back to the bail-out. Not a good plan.

At step 1900, the trail was getting ridiculously steep, and I had to start crabbing my way. My forward progress was down to 10/minute.

It got worse at 2000 – this is where the small logs with little spacing become more like a ladder and I had to climb with all fours. Not fun.

My rate to that point was down to 5. Really slow.

Thankfully at about this point, I had hit the false summit where the slope leveled out a little. It was a real relief for me because I was getting woozy from the effort and altitude. But I knew I could not go back, and I was less than 700 steps away from the end. By step 2200, the end was in sight. Hallelujah!

By step 2500, I could almost taste it…I was going to make it. I was back up to 17 steps/minute. But then I hit the last steep section. Of course that had to happen. But I was a man on a mission. I just counted 10 steps, rested a few seconds, and then pushed on until I made it to step 2600. Then I started counting each step since there were only 178 left to go. Some younger couple passed me and told me they were watching from behind and thought I was doing great. I guess I should not think of it as trying to encourage the old man. I thanked them.

It was 2:05PM at step 2700. I took a deep breath and trucked on – 5 minutes later, I made it to the end. Woo Hoo!!!!

Absolutely exhausted, but feeling pretty good to be milling around with everyone else that had made it to the top. There were all kinds of places to sit, so I found a good one, dropped my pack, took a few selfies, and settled down to rehydrate and eat a power bar. It was getting late, and the temperature was dropping at 8500’, so I did not want to linger too long. I was also afraid I’d stiffen up if I rested too long.

The Easy Trail Back

I’ve found that the return portion of any hike can be the most difficult. Depending on the difficulty of reaching your destination, the excitement of the hike/climb wears off, you may be tired and dehydrated, and all you want to do really is get to the end and have some ice cream or a beer. Well, all of the above fit my current state of body and mind. I was wishing Uber had a helicopter, or there was a zip line going back down above the stairs. No such luck. Four miles on switch backs, and a somewhat rocky trail. I was tired, and one of my knees was sore, but there was no choice but to head over to the start of the trail down.

The trail was well marked and maintained, but there were a lot of steps and rocks to negotiate. Normally, that would not be too hard for me, but going downhill is hard on my bad knee, and I had to be extremely careful not to trip and lose my balance. I stopped along the way to take a few photos – nice scenery so I could not resist.

The trail seemed to go on forever. When I finally saw the tracks for the cog railroad I knew I was getting close to the end, and then I saw the Barr Trail parking lot.

It still seemed like I was approaching the end as a limit – getting close but never quite getting there. But finally, it did end, and I limped a short distance downhill to the shuttle stop. It was about 5PM by then, and I no longer had an interest of walking back up to that small shop to buy a T-shirt and the fruit popsicle. My legs felt like mush, and all I wanted to do was get to the car and head back to Denver before my body seized up. Besides, there was great beer on tap at my friends’ house.

Some Final Thoughts

It was quite a day…and I was glad that it was over and did not fall and injure myself. I really was not in shape for this adventure, and pushed myself to my limits to get to the top. I did learn something from this – I’m 73 going on 74, and have some medical issues which I have to consider when signing up for adventures like this. Also, I’m living by myself now – Jan was used to ferrying me off to emergency clinics when I injured myself, and took care of me when I did stupid things. I don’t have that anymore. I stay off of ladders at home for that reason, so I needed to apply that common sense to my outdoor adventures.

But all things considered….I did it!

Some useful links:

Info on the Incline

Manitou Springs & Reservations

And for anyone interested in technical details

I played around with my climb rates (Steps/Minute) for the fun of it

Step #	Time	Minutes to reach	Step Rate
Start	10:38
500	11:00	0:22	22.73
800	11:16	0:16	18.75
900	11:25	0:09	11.11
1200	11:41	0:16	18.75
1500	12:07	0:26	11.54
1600	12:17	0:10	10
1800	12:45	0:28	7.14
1900	13:03	0:18	5.56
2000	13:14	0:11	9.09
2200	13:30	0:16	12.5
2500	13:47	0:17	17.65
2600	13:58	0:11	9.09
2700	14:05	0:07	14.29
2768	14:10	0:05	13.6
Average Step Rate for Climb			13.06
Time to summit			3:32

October 6, 2025

Back in Colorado

After relaxing and doing pretty much nothing (other than eating and drinking) for my first two days in Colorado, Thursday was the first with planned activities requiring some level of effort (other than eating and drinking). I had reservations for the Cave of the Winds, and The Seven Falls, both in Colorado Springs – about a 90 minute drive from where I’m staying.

I’ve known of the existence of both of these tourist stops in the Springs, but never managed to visit either in the 38 years we lived in Colorado. I was too occupied with activities that risked significant injury (or worse) like rock and ice climbing, and cave tours or boutique hiking just seemed so tame and boring. But now that I’m old and decrepit, the Seven Falls park seemed like a perfect warmup for the Manitou Incline since there were steep stairs to climb, and it’s just too hard to turn down cave opportunities after doing six of them this past summer. Let’s start with the cave.

Cave of the Winds

It’s kind of surprising that there are not a lot of caves in Colorado which have been developed into public tourist attractions. There is certainly enough limestone here, and there are hundreds of caves but only two have been open to the public. That may have something to do with mining – in Colorado, it was all up in the hard-rock mountains, so you did not have miner’s poking around in every hole in the ground like you had in California where gold was first discovered in streams in the foothills. If an entrepreneurial miner found a cave near the California Sierra, where there was no possibility of finding gold, they made a profit by selling tickets to climb around with candles and ropes. At any rate, I decided to do half of the public caves in Colorado. This one is located up a fairly spectacular canyon, cut into the limestone formation – there are trails going down there, but I did not explore them.

Once you drive up the winding road to the parking lot, there’s a short walk over to the visitor center….and you get to see all the usual kiddie attractions that all caves seem to have. This one even had a climbing wall and one of the adventure climbing things. All for children. Not interested anyway.

So, on to the tour. The COW (Cave Of The Winds without the T) offers four different tours – a standard one hour tour through about a half mile of the cavern, a Lantern tour which covers some of the Manitou Cavern which is connected to the COW, most of which is unlit and muddy. Wandering around in the dark with candle lanterns did not seem like a lot of fun to me. They also have children education tour (obviously not for me) and an adventure tour, which is another opportunity to crawl through muddy, extremely low/narrow passages. I opted for the more civilized tour.

I won’t go into too much detail, since there was nothing outstanding at this cave that I have not already seen in the last six caves in California. There were some nice features, and the tour meandered through a lot of very narrow and low passages which made things interesting and potentially painful at times. There was one point along the path called the Ping-Pong, a narrow, low spot where visitors bang their head against one side, and bounce over to the other. I ducked and avoided the experience. The tour guide pointed out some interesting features, like one smooth and shiny stalactite which was the product of too many visitors running their hands on it – that’s a major faux pas in caves. Any time you touch the walls or a feature, you are leaving oils on the rocks which over time builds up so that water simply sheets off of it. Once that happens, you no longer get mineral build up. More information than you ever wanted to know.

It turned out to be a nice, enjoyable hour or so – my only issue was the lack of down-lighting along many of the passages. While the tour path was paved most of the way, the light was dim in the narrow passages, and it was hard to see floor, especially when you were trying to avoid smashing your head on a low overhead. For me, with my balance issues, this was really a problem. Most of the other caves had lighting focused down on the trail, which I think is safer. I guess that’s just a sign of aging for me.

And here are a couple of photos from the cave tour – all with my new phone.

The Seven Falls (eight actually)

The Seven Falls is hard to describe – it’s basically a private mountain park, owned and managed by the Broadmoor Hotel. The property has been private since the 1800’s, and visitors have been charged to hike in to see the waterfalls at the end of the box canyon. Now, there is a high-end restaurant at the base of the falls, an elevator to get up to a viewing area, a place to buy ice cream and frozen fruit bars (more on that later), and lots of helpful workers who can cart you out to the shuttle stop if you are worn out from climbing stairs.

You start your adventure at another Broadmoor location, where you park your car and take the shuttle to the main gate of the park. The bus driver tells you there is a very short walk from there to the base of the falls. I asked him the distance. He said 20 minutes top. Uh…that’s not distance. I was not going to argue with him because he told us he was an ex-Navy Seal. Thank you for your service.

The walk was actually .75 miles, but it is on a wide road, with rest stops, bathrooms, lots of flowers, and lots of photo ops of the creek and canyon walls. A very pleasant walk.

As you approach the end of the canyon you first see one of the options available for adventure seekers – a zip line way up on the cliffs. Nope. Not for me.

Just before you reach the restaurant, you pass by a small gift shop, which also sells frozen pops and ice cream. The stairs and elevator for the viewing platform start there as well. After my .75 mile short hike, tacked on to wandering around in a cave for an hour, made the popsicle sound like a really good reason for taking a break. I highly recommend the mango.

After my break, I walked the rest of the way to the base of the falls, where they have a really nice covered viewing area, filled with rocking chairs. I think they target old folks for that area. Since I am in that targeted demographic (old), I tried out a rocking chair for a while, pondering my fate – do I really want to do this?

Of course I did! Old but not obselete.

It really was not that bad – the first set of stairs were the longest, and I just needed one rest stop before getting to the top. With the railings on either side, it reminded me of going up Half Dome. Without the risk of falling thousands of feet down. Looking down the stairs from the first platform, you can see the where everyone sits on the rockers, deciding whether to head up. You also get some nice views of the falls from that platform.

Once you negotiate the last few sets of stairs (270+), there are a couple of well marked trails you can take. One goes to an overlook, about a mile of hiking in the sun. The other goes off in the forest to the last waterfall, a half mile hike in the shade. I opted for the shade. This trail was quite nice, but made me realize that I should have brought along a better pair of hiking boots. I wanted to use my Forest Gump brace, which only fits in what are really water/beach shoes, and were not meant for hopping around on rocks. But, I managed to stay upright and made it to the falls, and then back to the top of the stairs.

I had recently bought the latest Google Pixel phone (Pixel 10), and decided to just use it instead of my heavy Sony A7 for this excursion, so the waterfalls were a great place to try out some of the features of my new toy. Plus, it was nice not having to carry the extra weight climbing up the stairs.

Oddly enough, the way down the stairs was not too difficult – my bad knee did not seem to mind, and I made it down to the rocky chairs in just a few minutes. And then sat for a while. I was getting a bit tired at that point. As I headed back down the road, I figured I might as well do the other stair climb – it was only another 175 steps up to the viewing area. But I did take the elevator down – that was a nifty bit of engineering since they had to blast that through the rock.

Since I was right next to the gift shop, I thought it would be best to re-energize with another of those wonderful fruit popsicles again. The orange cream was excellent.

All that remained was to hike the short .75 miles back to the shuttle stop. As I was limping along, one of the golf carts pulled up, and the very pleasant driver asked if I needed a lift? She was just so nice so I could hardly turn her down. Hey, I’m old and decrepit. I’m allowed to cheat once in a while. But I only hitched part way. I wanted to take a few photos on the way back.

This turned out to be a really nice day – perfect weather, I survived a few miles of hiking at high altitude, wandered through a cave without falling, made it through climbing and descending a few hundred steep stairs, and made it back without injuring myself. What more can you ask for? (A new knee would be a good start).

October 4, 2025