Rocky Mountain High
Monday, August 23, 2010 at 6:39PM Here are some photos from my hike through the Williams Waldo Canyon and from the 14,115 ft summit of Pikes' Peak, far and away the tallest mountain I've ever been to the top of and one of the country's (and world's) tallest.
That's right, I broke the law in my pursuit of the best hike in Colorado Springs. Actually I found this hike on the internet and read that the sign is all show. The Williams Canyon hike is supposed to be one of Colorado and Manitou Springs' best kept secrets. I did run into some Cave of the Winds employees there and had to play dumb "No I didn't sign a release, sorry I didn't know where to get one. I'll be sure to do it next time though." See ya later suckas, and I was off.
Purdy waterfall
The biggest mushroom EVER. I would imagine a person could get quite Rocky Mountain high on this 
Pikes Peak. That's right, I stood on the top of that...
...and it looked like this. That's Colorado Springs in the distance, some 7,000 ft below where I'm standing.
That's my sister Suzy and brother Sam. It was very cold.
This is facing west looking out at the rest of the Rockies. They look pretty small from up here, don't they? 
That's the whole family (well almost the whole family) freezing their butts off.
I thought this was really cool. The mountain actually looked like the diagram. In the first half of the drive up, there are all these spruce and aspen trees everywhere and then they abruptly stop when you cross the alpine line. After that it's just rock, lichens and some moss here and there. If you can't read it the sign says that up on the summit (which is a whopping 2.5 miles above sea level) there's 40% less oxygen than at the bottom. Winds can get up 120 miles an hour and it's not uncommon to get 20 ft snow drifts and temperatures of -60 below in winter.
Even though it's still August, it was easily below 50 degrees on the top. Also in order to make the 12.6 mile hike to the top you have to leave early in the morning so that you can miss the severe thunderstorms they often get in the afternoon. I'm really glad I didn't decide to hike this yet, I would have been woefully unprepared. I will need some of those dorky zip-off shorts/pants (shants).
That's Wilbur the Fox. He's lives halfway down the mountain behind the ranger's camp. He's patiently waiting for a squirrel that he chased into that crack.Welp, that concludes my trip. It's a pretty beautiful place. A place where the beer flows like wine. Where beautiful women instinctively flock like the salmon of Capistrano. I'm talking about a little place called Asssspen (well technically due east of Aspen). As you might have noticed, I've been quoting Dumber and Dumber a lot.
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