ON PIKE'S PEAK.
We reached the top last night in a blinding snow and hail storm, with
the lightning snapping and cracking around our heads and the thunder
rolling around on all sides of us, below as well as above. But in
order to have it clearly understood how it came to be "we," and how
we came to get here, I must go back a little and give an account of
the trip since leaving the train at Denver.
The streets of that city are not paved, but they are so hard and smooth
most of the year that no one could find any fault with them. The fine
sand packs down very hard. The train which I took in Omaha reached
Denver so early in the morning that I found very few business
men at their stores and so I rode around the principal streets,
visited their fine county court-house, which must have cost in the
neighborhood of $300,000, and looked with wonder at the snow-capped
mountains to be seen at the end of every street, seemingly only a
few miles away to the north or west. Streams of clear water run down
the gutters of most of the streets, which gives to the city a very
cool and refreshed appearance. But one need not look to the streams
of water to feel revived; the very air was as crisp and cool as an
October morning in Connecticut. It became so cold in the cars the
night before that there was no sleep for any one not provided with
blankets to cover him, and they tell me this is a sample of their
weather all through the summer. In the middle of the day the sun is
hot, but in the shade it is never uncomfortable. It is a very dry
atmosphere, so that there is very little perspiration to be seen on
a person's face when exercising. For several weeks the salt sweat
has run down my forehead, in the heat of the day, and into my eyes,
making them smart and look glossy, but here the perspiration dries
before it can reach one's eyebrows. After being taken about the
city and entertained by Chief Consul Geo. F. Higgins (a royal good
fellow, light complexion, of medium height and build, and wearing a
moustache), and after being escorted out of the city by another member
of the club,--Mr. F. J. Chamard, also a light complexioned fellow,
we started on for Colorado Springs together. J. A. Hasley, a member
of the Kansas City Bicycle Club, reached Denver a few days before
I did, intending to take a trip in the same direction I was going,
and that is how we came to climb Pike's Peak together.
This chapter, and perhaps others to follow, will give our experiences
nearly in the order in which they occurred.
The first thing that surprised me was the sort of grazing country
to be seen on all sides. A farmer in Connecticut who would turn his
cattle out into such a scanty pasture to get a living would be a fit
subject for prosecution by the Humane Society. I had supposed that
Colorado was the finest grazing country in the world, and was never
more surprised than to see the dry, sandy, brown appearance of the
country. Only at a distance did it look green; close to, but a few
scanty bunches, or rather spears of grass could be seen. Actually, such
fields in the Eastern States would not be considered fit for even sheep
pastures. The only way the herds of horses and cattle get a living is
by traveling. They are at liberty to roam over thousands of acres,
and in that way manage to subsist. The winters are not very severe,
but it is no wonder so many cattle perish when the supply of grass,
scanty at the best, is covered with a few inches of snow. Irrigation
is carried on to a great extent, but from what I can see it was more
for the purpose of watering the stock than for bringing the land
up to a high state of cultivation. So far I have seen very little
land producing a fair crop of fodder, and that is all they intend to
raise. There is no turf to be seen growing naturally.
The ride south, from Denver to Colorado Springs, was over a very
fair road, although there was probably ten miles of walking in the
seventy-five miles. To the east of us was a level or slightly rolling
country, while on the other side the snow-covered mountains loomed
up apparently only twenty-five miles, but in reality seventy-five
miles away. Even the foot-hills, so called, mountains four and five
thousand feet above us, were twenty-five miles distant. Such is the
clearness of the atmosphere one would think he could walk over to
them in a couple of hours. That afternoon, just after the sun had sunk
beneath the snowy tops, we struck some Colorado mosquitoes. The first
intimation we had of their presence, while riding along at a lively
gait, was a prickling sensation all over the calves of our legs, and
my stockings were actually black with them. An Eastern mosquito will
usually be somewhat embarrassed in his business affairs by a slight
motion of the body or a wave of the hand, but these in Colorado are
not annoyed in the least by the circular motion of a flying wheelman's
legs, and will alight upon his calves and proceed to business with a
dispatch that is equaled nowhere else in the world. And be it said
to the credit of their excellent military discipline, they never
stop drilling or desert their post till they are crushed or brushed
away. Once I jumped from the machine in agony, and such a jar would
tend to dislodge an ordinary specimen of this kind of animal, but
not so with these; every one remained at work, and thirteen perished
at a time from one slap of my hand. Many a dismount resulted nearly
as disastrously to the enemy, but this cost too much in time, and
brushing away while riding was finally resorted to as the least
expensive means of warfare. They seemed to go in swarms like bees,
and made a noise nearly as loud. The next morning we rode through
another army of them, but the only lasting result of the whole fight
has been to give us a very satisfying occupation, whenever there was
nothing more important on hand, in scratching the different areas of
our legs below the knees and regularly returning to the same locality
always with renewed relish.
Prairie dogs were quite common along the road, and they would sit on
their little mounds and remonstrate with us in a squeaking voice for
disturbing them, till we were close upon them. Jack rabbits were not
so common, only three or four having been seen thus far.
That night we walked down a lane to a ranch to find shelter for the
night, when a horse, taking fright at our machines, tried to jump over
the gate at the foot of the lane, and in doing so, gate, horse, and all
came down in a heap together with a crash. The horse jumped up and went
off limping, but we thought the next ranch would be a safer place for
us, and so we kept on a couple of miles and got an excellent supper,
but our bed was on the floor in an old store-room. This slight hardship
was soon forgotten in the crisp, cool air of the next morning, and we
rode along, hugely enjoying the mountain scenery on our right, till
we met a drove of horses and cattle in the road, where barbed-wire
fences inclosed the highway on both sides. The horses took fright
first and stampeded down the road followed by the cows and calves,
the seventy-five or a hundred head leaving a great cloud of dust
behind them. The ranchman, who was driving them to water, tried his
best, with the vigorous use of his lungs and a shovel in his hands,
to stop them by running backwards and forwards across the road,
and after we had dismounted and gone clear out to the fence he
succeeded in driving them past us. Coming up all out of breath and
his eyes flashing with excitement, the full-bearded ranchman yelled,
"By J----s, you fellows will get shot down here before you go very
far with them things! If my horses had gone over that wire fence,
by J----s, I should have wanted to put a hole through you," then
cooling down a little at our expressed regrets, he said, oaths omitted,
"a while ago, coming from Denver with a load of oats, I met a couple
of fellows on their velocipedes and they were yelling and hollering,
and did not offer to stop. My horses saw them first, and started
down the hill as if nothing was hitched to them. They turned down the
railroad track and took that forty hundred of oats over those ties as
if they were feathers. I finally stopped them down in the cut, but I
was mad, you bet. Those dudes were strangers around here or they would
not have said what they did to me. They told me to go talk to a dog
and to do some other things. They did not know enough to keep their
mouths shut after they had got me into that fix. So I just pulled
my belt gun and held it up. 'Now,' says I, 'you just come back or
I will corral you. While I go out and stick up a couple of flags,
you just lay down those things and go and pack those bags of oats
out here into the road.' They wouldn't at first, but finally did,
and it did me good to see them New York dudes tugging away at them
300 pound sacks. I unhitched the horses and made them fellows pull
the wagon back and load the oats in again, but they emptied both
their bottles before they got through."
To appreciate this story, and the manner in which it was told, one
needs to hear it highly spiced, as it was with the huge oaths and many
of the strange expressions used out here. The conversation turned on
other subjects, and before he finally bade us "good luck," I learned
that droves of mares and a few stallions are turned out loose, and
in a short time each stallion has selected his drove of mares to look
after and guard, and no mare from any other drove will be allowed to
come near his drove. One day a mule tried to get near a drove and the
stallion was kept busy all day biting and driving that mule away,
who scampered off only to return again to bother the stallion so
much he had no chance to eat for hours. With cattle it is the same,
the bulls selecting their drove of cows to guard and none from any
other drove need apply for admission.
As we traveled south, the range of foot-hills turned to the east
until we rode along nearly at the base of them. The top of Pike's
Peak was plainly to be seen over these foot hills all day, and this
snow-covered peak seemed to travel south on the other side of this
range of hills just as fast as we did. It looked more like a hooded
ghost peering over the green hills at us than a mountain peak 14,000
feet high. As we rode along it would go out of sight behind a hill,
only to reappear again farther south, always keeping just so far
ahead of us. This game of hide and seek did not end till we reached
Colorado Springs, where the peak was directly west of us.
We had ridden but a few miles from Denver, when the thin air began to
affect me. Hill climbing was out of the question, and the smallest
patch of sand or the slightest up grade would make me puff like a
winded horse. I tried to breathe entirely through my nose, but the
suffocating feeling was unbearable, and so I rode along, mouth wide
open. The dry atmosphere parched my tongue and mouth, and my tongue,
shriveled to half its size, rattled around in my mouth like a wooden
spoon in a bowl. Again I tried to keep my mouth shut, but that was
impossible, so I made up my mind to get used to it, and rode miles
without any water. Even water would only keep my mouth moist a
short time.
We reached Palmer Lake, a pleasant resort 7,000 feet high, about
noon. This place is nearly 1,000 feet higher than either Denver
or Colorado Springs, and the grade descends both to the north
and south. The foot-hills, three or four thousand feet higher, are
close by to the west, and to the east the country is a rolling sea of
green. But the most beautiful sight of all is the wild flowers. White,
red, yellow, blue, purple, violet, in fact all the colors imaginable
are seen in great profusion on all sides, acres and acres of nothing
else, these beautiful little flowers not over three or four inches
high growing so closely together as to crowd out what little green
grass tried to grow there. In fact, while all the colors of the
rainbow but this one lived closely and happily together, green
seemed to be an outcast among them. And the colors which one would
naturally think would be pale and faded growing in such a dry and
sandy soil were just the opposite. I never saw such vivid colors. The
varieties were mostly foreign to me, but I shall always remember the
colors. Occasionally, rising above these fields of little flowers,
were red and white thistles, red and white cactuses, and Spanish
bayonets, or soap weed as they call it, all in full blossom, too.
I can't begin to describe the delightful ride down from Palmer
Lake. The coasting over a road, perfectly smooth, that wound around
and over little knolls that gave a wavy motion to the ride; this was
enjoyment enough in itself, but to go gliding along without using a
muscle in this delightful manner, and see the foot hills, perfectly
green to their tops, and the pure white peaks sparkling in the sun
rising just above them, all only a mile or two away seemingly, on the
right, and to the left these immense fields of the very brightest
and most beautiful flowers ever seen, growing close up to the road
and stretching out into the distance till their colors were lost in
the pale-green of the rolling prairie--to thus imperfectly describe
the scene is all I can do; one must see it to realize it.
Saturday morning, early, we reached Manitou, where water power
furnishes the hotels with electric lights, and started up Ute Pass
on our wheels, to visit the Grand Cavern. We were going to leave our
wheels and walk up, but a guide told us it was good riding over the
other side of this mountain, from the Cave of the Winds down through
Williams Cañon, back to Manitou; so we pushed the wheels up a mile
over a very good carriage road, six or eight hundred feet high,
to the Grand Cavern, with the intention of going across, but here
the fun commenced. The only way across was by a narrow trail, but
the guide at the cavern said it was all down hill, and so we kept
on. The trail went down the side of the mountains very steep, and we
had not gone far when it was evident it was the wrong trail, and so
back we started; but it took us both to get one wheel up at a time,
and the way it made us puff--well, strong as we both were it took every
ounce of strength we had to get back. After hunting around awhile we
found the right trail, and started on in the direction of Williams
Cañon, which was plainly to be seen just below. The trail came to an
end at the edge of the cañon, which was three or four hundred feet
straight down, but an immense hole, perhaps twenty-five feet across,
went down into the bowels of the mountain about two hundred feet,
to the entrance of the Cave of the Winds. Rickety ladders and shaky
stairs wound down around the inside of this hole, and down these we
must go with our wheels! Yes, the guide was right, it was down hill
with a vengeance. We took my wheel first, it being the lightest,
and Hasley went down a few rounds on the ladder and then took hold
of the big wheel and held it firm so that the rubber tire slid down
the ladder. I held on to the handle bar with one hand and the ladder
with the other, and thus we reached the bottom of the first ladder,
step by step, but safely. The next pair of steep stairs went under
the shelving rocks so close that there was not room to get the wheel
down, and so we lifted it over the edge of the railing, and I let
it down as far as I could with one hand, and Hasley ran down to the
next stairs underneath and caught the wheel as I let go. The rest of
the stairs were not so steep, but a single misstep at any time would
have sent us all to the bottom of this hole in unseemly haste. Getting
Hasley's wheel down was a repetition of our first experience, only his
was heavier, and the stairs creaked more, and it was more difficult
to get his machine over the railing and let it down at arm's length,
to be caught by the other underneath; but at the entrance of the cave,
stairs led down under a boulder, suspended as that one was at the Flume
in the White Mountains, and out into the daylight of the cañon, and
we were soon down in the road, hardly realizing how we had got there.
The scenery down the cañon was so grand, and the whole trip was so
exciting, that we did not regret at the end that we had taken our
wheels where no other wheels have ever been, and where no other wheels
ever ought to be taken again.
While we were taking a late breakfast at the Cliff House at
Manitou--Manitou is at the very base and almost surrounded by
mountains--a young gentleman asked us if we would escort two young
ladies up to the top of Pike's Peak, and of course we were only too
glad to have the opportunity. But at the last moment one of the ladies
refused to go, because it would prevent her attending the first hop of
the season; and the other lady who was so enthusiastic that her sense
of propriety barely prevailed over her intense desire to climb up the
peak, said, sadly disappointed, as she left us: "Now I will go up to
my room and have a good cry," and her eyes were already running over.
The scenery up the ravine for two or three miles was magnificent,
huge boulders filling the gorge, down which a good-sized stream went
dashing over and under these boulders in every conceivable manner. In
fact, the sides of the mountains up a thousand feet, were covered with
huge boulders just on the point of rolling down, and once in a while
between them we could catch a glimpse of the country below. Five miles
up the trail, which is a very good foot path, is the Half Way House,
and we felt much encouraged to find it had taken us only two hours. But
from there up, for four miles, the trail went through timber mostly,
and we began to get winded. Hasley kept his mouth shut most of the
time, which I could not do from the first; but for two hours we had
not a drop of water to drink.
Just below timber line, which is 12,000 feet above the sea, we met
parties coming down, three and four at a time, and they encouraged
us by saying: "Only four miles farther," "Keep your strength for the
last two miles," "You will have to leave the trail the last mile and
follow the telegraph poles up over the snow." Still our legs held out
all right, but I began to get dizzy whenever I looked up or stooped to
drink at a running stream of snow-water. Finally, snow was the only
thing to moisten our mouths, but we both drank or ate very sparingly
of this. About one thousand feet above timber line we had to cross
snow-drifts one or two hundred feet across, and very soon our feet
were cold and wet. Sometimes the snow would let us down to our hips,
and then we would wallow along to some projecting rocks and climb
up. This took my breath the worst of anything, and I laid down on
the rocks, completely exhausted sometimes.
About this time a snow-storm commenced, and the wind blew so cold we
could only stop a short time to get our wind. The flashes of lightning
were getting to be altogether too frequent to be pleasant, and the snow
and hail were so blinding we could scarcely see from one telegraph
pole to another, for now we had left the trail, and were climbing
straight up the side of the peak, with nothing in sight but rocks and
boulders half covered with snow. Sometimes we slipped down through
these boulders, and then after crawling out, the only thing to do was
to lie down with our backs to the driving storm and get rested. When
I started on again it was to stagger like a drunken man, for I was
dizzy most of the last mile all the time. When we were sure the top
must be just over the brow of the steep hill we were slowly climbing,
we finally reached there only to see those telegraph poles leading
almost straight up into the air and out of sight up the steepest
and most rocky hill we had yet encountered. Once in the blinding
snow-storm we lost track of the poles, but it was only because one had
been blown down, and the next was hidden entirely from view. Finally,
after crawling, staggering, and climbing up and over the last mile of
rocks, and using up an hour and a half in doing it, I caught sight of a
big stone house through the fog and snow, and yelled to Hasley with all
the strength I had left, and that wasn't much: "Look at the chimneys."
Those who have done any mountain climbing can better imagine our
feelings at that moment than I can describe them. Much as we regretted
it at first, how thankful we were those ladies had not started up
with us, for we never could have reached the top with them. But, as
if to repay us for being deprived of their presence, those beautiful
little wild flowers accompanied us all the way up, growing brighter in
color, if that were possible, the higher up they grew, until on the
very top of the peak, 14,147 feet above the sea, we picked a lovely
little bouquet from beneath a few inches of snow. These tiny flowers,
not more than an inch in height, grow close to a melting drift of
snow and ice wherever there is the least bit of sand or soil to
nourish them. The two signal service men, Messrs. Ramsay and Potter,
did everything possible for us, and in a very short time we were
ourselves again. These two men were so kind and considerate toward
us, and made us feel so much at home, that we concluded to prolong
our stay on the summit until Monday.
Distance traveled on the wheel, 2,075 miles.