Barr Trail is the historic 13-mile trail to the top of Pikes Peak. Early tourists took a 3-day burro trip to make this journey. Legend has it, Zalmon Simmons came back from such a trip so sore that he financed the cog train railway.
Other legends of this trail are stories of the runners of this trail. There is a race called the Pikes Peak Ascent which is a race of 13.32 mile ascent with 7,185 feet vertical gain and has a record time of 2 hours 12 minutes. There is also the Pikes Peak marathon: an up and down course whose record is 3:16:39. As amazing are those times, there is more to be amazed by for in this oxygen-sparse environment, those races are held as a Double: do the ascent one day and run the marathon the next day! The legendary runner of the Double is Matt Carpenter who is still setting records in his age group.
Our expectations of the trail were more realistic for ourselves. We hiked as far as we could in 40 minutes and turned around in order to be on the cog train for our seat reservations.
Click Barr Trail, 25 Aug 2010for ten more photos.
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