Refreshing beverages await those who summit
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- Created on Wednesday, 23 June 2010 18:09
- Written by Dena Rosenberry
Kevin Kreck, The Gazette
By Andrew Wineke
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If the thousands of people crowding the streets of downtown Colorado Springs for the Jack Quinn’s Running Club make you claustrophobic, if the 3.1-mile Quinn’s course is too flat for your liking, or if you just hate having to wait until you actually finish the run before knocking back a beer, take heart: UpaDowna is here for you.
UpaDowna is the brainchild of Steve “Yeti” Hitchcock, who founded the club as a social, noncompetitive way to get his friends outdoors while serving in the Army in Germany. When he moved to Colorado Springs, he brought the club stateside four years ago and began hosting runs up the Manitou Incline, fourteener climbs and other outdoor activities.
Climbing tends to make one thirsty, which is where the UpaDowna name comes in: It stands for “Up a mountain, down a beer.”
So, when the UpaDownas reach a summit, they crack open a cold one.
“It’s miraculous how motivating” beer can be, said Jessica Speer.
The incline, the club’s regular destination, is a 1-mile, 2,000-foot-elevation-gain test of fitness and fortitude. It’s also illegal, since it crosses property owned by the Manitou and Pikes Peak Cog Railway, although the city of Colorado Springs is working to allow access — read story.
Even stone-cold sober the incline is challenging and often treacherous — witness the man who suffered a serious leg injury earlier this week after falling on a piece of rebar.
UpaDowna may sound like a frat party in running shoes, or an accident waiting to happen, but not everyone drinks, Hitchcock noted, and those who do lie about how much.
“We drink, we have fun, but we’re not dummies,” he said.
Indeed, Monica Williams has become a regular at UpaDowna’s runs, but stays away from the suds entirely.
“I’m not really a beer fan,” she said.
Nevertheless, she said, UpaDowna “is the first thing that got me out doing exercise every week. I didn’t think it was going to be fun (but now) I get super excited and pumped up for it.”
The club also goes on road trips, such as the recent Teva Mountain Games in Vail, and climbs the occasional fourteener.
“That’s all we care about, that everyone gets out and has fun,” said Robert “Bunny” Mitchell (not all of the UpaDownas have nicknames, but the ones who do have good ones).
Some members skip the sweat entirely and simply join the group for post-run libations at Kinfolks in Manitou Springs.
It’s an outing, Hitchcock said, not a race.
“We try not to set a start time, just a summit time and a beer time,” he said.
The peak crowd this spring has been about 60 UpaDowners, while fewer than a dozen marched through winter’s snowstorms and chugged slushy PBRs.
“I don’t even know what to tell people what we are,” Mitchell said. “We go in the mountains. We drink beer.”
On a recent trip, Hitchcock carried a pair of Pabst Blue Ribbon cans in his hands as he climbed beneath the blazing June sun.
“It reminds me of my goal,” he said. —
Call the writer at 636-0275.
UPADOWNA
UpaDowna is an outdoors and running club that climbs the Manitou Incline Thursdays, then meets for drinks around 7:30 p.m. at Kinfolks, 950 Manitou Ave., Manitou Springs.
Info: upadowna .com, or go to “upadowna” on Facebook.
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