Garden of the Gods
For an SLI (service learning initiative), our team planned a trip to Colorado Springs to visit the Garden of the Gods. It was a beautiful day and we spent the morning hiking through the park.
Afterwords, we stopped in Manitou Springs to have lunch at an overpriced Mexican restaurant and then to browse the shops a bit. Right outside of Manitou Springs is a trail called the Manitou Incline.
According to Wikipedia, "The trail is the remains of a former incline railway whose tracks washed out during a rock slide in 1990. The Incline is famous for its sweeping views and steep grade, as steep as 68% in places,[1] making it a fitness challenge for locals in the Colorado Springs area. The incline gains over 2,000 feet (610 m) of elevation in less than one mile." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manitou_Springs_Incline)
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| The Manitou Incline from the top |
We decided to climb it. I decided to climb part of it. We'd been walking around all day, and my feet hurt, and I wasn't really feeling it. But then you get up a little ways, and you figure you might as well keep going. You can see the peak. It's so close. You keep trucking through, step by step, wheezing and sweating, and finally.....shit. That wasn't actually the top?!?
The Incline has what wikipedia refers to as a "false summit" and what I refer to as a cruel, cruel joke. What you thought was the top was actually just a crest that blocks the real summit from view. At that point my legs felt like jelly and I was dying for oxygen, but going back down wasn't really an option, because it was very high up and the steps were very janky, and I am not a fan of heights. So I kept going to the top, where I would be able to take a different trail down which was much less steep. Finally, I made it, in a little under an hour, I think.
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| I'm still alive!
By the time we got down it was sunset. The end of a long, fun day of team time.
Day of Volunteering at Summit Lake
Our team had talked about setting up some ISP's (independent service projects - basically volunteering with someone besides FEMA) to do over break and transition week. I had found an awesome organization called Volunteers for Outdoor Colorado that does environmental conservation and restoration projects throughout the state.
We got a group of seven of us together to help them out on their Summit Lake Ecological Restoration and Shelter Rehabilitation project. This is an excerpt of the email that VOC sent us a few days after the project:
" 40 volunteers showed up at Summit Lake to restore delicate high alpine tundra and install a stone floor in a historic structure. In all participants were able to transplant 89 plants, restore 112 ft of buck and rail fence and install 176 square feet of rock flooring. The work will help restore an extremely sensitive area that sees thousands of visitors a week during the summer months." 
As you can see, I worked on the transplanting.
Summit Lake is on Mt. Evens, a 14er about an hour and a half away from Denver. We were working up at 12,800 feet.
It was absolutely gorgeous, but the altitude definitely made the work difficult. I could use the pickaxe for about 30 seconds before I would start getting lightheaded and gasping for breath. So unfortunately, we had to work pretty slowly.
After lunch a storm rolled in and we had to call it a day. They made it very clear that lightning is no joke at that altitude. So we ran through the rain back to our van and headed back to Denver.
The rest of transition week was spent catching up with teams we hadn't seen in a while, discovering the $2 margarita happy hour at Cafe Chihuahua, and square dancing at the Cowboy Lounge.
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