Pikes Peak Region Trail Finder

BY DAVE PHILIPPS, THE GAZETTE

You know that ounce of prevention everyone always talks about using instead of a pound of cure?

On the old Manitou Incline, it comes in the form of an underground band of locals armed with sledgehammers and axes.

Their self-appointed mission is to keep the abandoned tourist railroad grade, which climbs the foothills west of Manitou Springs like a zipper, held together until the incline’s owners and its fanatics can reach an agreement on officially opening it to the public. They say their little repairs now will stave off a massive effort in the future.

“Right now we’re just in preserve mode, trying to keep erosion under control until we can do more,” said “Doc,” an orthopedic surgeon and one of the primary incline stewards. He didn’t want his name used for fear of prosecution.

The incline lies almost entirely on property owned by Colorado Springs Utilities and the Manitou and Pikes Peak Cog Railway. Anyone stepping onto the steep chain of railroad ties is trespassing. Yet during the past few years, this forbidden route has grown into one of the top hiking destinations in the region, attracting hundreds of people a day in good weather.

The incline isn’t a trail. It was never meant to be a trail. It’s a jumble of wooden ties that became a cult workout in the 1990s for a handful of west-side fitness freaks. But trail or not, it has tapped into an underlying masochistic athletic vein in the city.

Now stay-at-home moms share the ties with Christian youth groups, track teams, guys with baggy pants and neck tattoos, expertly coiffed women chatting on cell phones, Olympic athletes, chubby empty nesters with dogs, kids barely big enough to clamber over the tallest steps and even buses of troops from Fort Carson.

No one tracks its use, but regular observation suggests the incline gets more use than its neighbor, Barr Trail, which has as many as 30,000 visits a year.

The hikers come, even though the route doesn’t show up in any guidebook, signs warn against trespassing and parking is almost nonexistent.

The nearby Barr Trail lot is almost always full, and hikers aren’t allowed in the adjacent cog lot. On busy days, many must park more than a half-mile down Ruxton Avenue.

They flock to the incline anyway.

“It’s addictive,” said Jeannine Clinton, who heard about the incline from the moms at her daughters’ gymnastics class. “It’s got to be the greatest workout in the world.”

A few incline lovers have been trying to find a way to legally allow hikers on the route while protecting the interests of landowners. Talks with owners, particularly the Manitou and Pikes Peak Cog Railway, have dragged on for years and, according to Ken Jaray, a local attorney facilitating the negotiations, “There isn’t an end in sight.”

As interest in the incline has grown, so has a group of volunteers. Members of the group, which numbers perhaps 40, say they don’t want to do anything illegal, but if they wait for a solution, the incline will disintegrate.

THINGS FALL APART

It isn’t the growing traffic that does most of the damage to the incline. It’s the incline itself. The grade is so steep that it falls apart on its own unless it has constant repair.

When the incline operated as a tourist train, employees regularly repaired damage from rock slides. Since then, rain and snow have continued to carve the slope.

A heavy rain late last month knocked out steps and gouged gullies along the side of the track, washing tons of gravel down the hillside.

Doc started spreading the word at the incline a few weeks after the big rain about an upcoming workday.

Keeping the ties in place is crucial because they act like staples holding the scar of the incline together. A loose tie opens a spot for damage during the next rain. The most serious threat is a gully on the side of the incline that is slowly undercutting the ties.

With only four days’ notice, 20 volunteers showed up for Doc’s workday, bringing their own tools and buying their own materials.

“Legal or not, they know this is important. If we don’t keep on top of this, the incline will just wash away,” Doc said. “And do you think people will stop coming if this place is falling apart? No, it will just get more dangerous.”

TRAIL GROUPS CAN’T HELP

Because the incline is not an official trail, trail groups such as Friends of the Peak can’t fix it. Grant money can’t be spent on it. The Forest Service doesn’t patrol it.

Mark Hesse, director of the Rocky Mountain Field Institute, which repairs trails on 14,000-foot peaks, assessed the incline in 2004 for the U.S. Forest Service and found “numerous erosion hot spots” and failing check dams. He said the incline needs experts to design a lasting solution for erosion.

“But someone like me can’t advise anyone who doesn’t have permission to be there,” he said. “We can’t do anything until access issues are resolved.”

Most people involved in the issue agree that access hinges on the cog owners.

Cog management is reluctant to turn the incline into a trail because it would put more pressure on its already bursting summer parking situation.

“We don’t have enough parking for our own customers,” said Spencer Wren, cog manager. “We don’t want another few hundred cars up there.”

The one group that has the money, manpower and permission to work on the incline is Colorado Springs Utilities, which has a pipeline easement running along the ties.

The city-owned utility brought in wood, pipes and anchors by helicopter in 1997 to repair erosion gullies that threatened the pipeline. At the same time, they shored up many of the ties people hike on.

Scott Campbell, a water resource manager for the utility, said the repairs are inspected yearly. If erosion threatens again, utility workers will go back in. “But the work seems to be holding up well enough that we don’t think we’ll have to go back,” he said.

He was surprised to hear things may be holding up so well because volunteers were patching much of the utility’s work.

In a twist of irony, the volunteers’ patching efforts may be keeping the utility from making more substantial repairs.

THE INCLINE’S MERRY MEN

Most volunteers’ stories of how they joined the trail are like Doc’s.

“I loved doing the incline,” Doc said, “and I noticed it was kind of falling apart, so I just started fixing little stuff, sweeping gravel off the ties or picking up trash. After a few months I realized I needed tools.”

He had only to be spotted with a shovel or sledgehammer before he met other people who had been quietly doing the same thing.

“We are upstanding people — doctors and lawyers, construction workers, Olympic athletes,” Doc said. “We don’t want to break the law, but we also don’t want to lose this special place.”

Usually the stewards work in informal groups of two or three, shoring up a tie here and there with tools hidden in the bushes, before continuing on with their workout.

“We don’t have any organization,” said a longtime volunteer named Dave, who, like others, didn’t want to give his last name. “We just see what needs to be done and we do it.”

No one has tried to stop the work.

Colorado Springs Utilities said stewards should not repair anything because they could unwittingly damage the city’s pipeline.

Cog manager Wren said the incline is not open to anyone, but he also said the business has no intention of patrolling the land.

“It would just be too expensive,” he said. “They just need to realize that they are trespassing.”

With or without permission, the stewards will likely carry on with their battle against erosion.

At 6 a.m. on a recent Saturday, the 20 volunteers who showed up were immediately bolstered by dozens of incline regulars who helped carry fence posts and bundles of rebar up the track.

“So many people saw what we were doing and wanted to help. They left cards, gave numbers. One guy I didn’t even know did the whole incline three times carrying loads,” Doc said.

By 2 p.m., they had patched some of the biggest problem spots.

Hesse, the sustainable trails group director, commends their efforts but said they are a stopgap at best.

“Anything is better than nothing,” he said, “but at some point, we’re going to have to do an extensive project there. It will be a major undertaking.”

If the cog granted an easement to a nonprofit trail group, Hesse said, the group could pay for repairs and shield the cog from lawsuits.

Until that happens, Doc said the volunteers will tackle the repairs that can’t wait.

“My ultimate goal is to keep it in good enough condition so that eventually, we can open it and make it a trail,” he said. “That’s all we want to do, just care for it, give it a little maintenance. If we do it right, no one will even know we’re there.”