A Canadian in Colorado: The Incline

On American Thanksgiving Day, we decided a fun morning activity would be to hit up the Incline in Manitou Springs. It's a mile long trail up 2000 vertical feet of stairs made from old railway ties (there used to be rails and a train that took tourists up... now you gotta climb it by foot). It's a pretty popular trail in the area. We were surprised to see how many people were there on Thanksgiving Morning. We met one man at the bottom who drives an hour each day to climb it twice! Once was enough for the day for me!
I knew it was going to be challenging, but whew! It was so tough! I was completely winded the whole way up. I had to stop countless times to catch my breath. It's strange when you're moving as slowly as possible and still hardly able to breath. Needless to say, when we finally reached the top (in 59 minutes) it was a great feeling of accomplishment!
After enjoying a small snack, and taking a few photos, we started our leisurely descent to the parking lot on the Barr Trail. If we were to have gone the other way on this trail it would have taken us to the top of Pike's Peak. But we didn't have 16 hours to spare for the round trip, so we'll save that adventure for another day (or weekend)!