Pikes Peak Region Trail Finder

The newest member of the AdAmAn Club, which has set off fireworks from the summit of Pikes Peak on New Year’s Eve nearly every year since 1922, has been climbing the mountain since she was a teenager.

Ann Nichols, a native of Manitou Springs, on Tuesday was named the 94th member of the exclusive community hiking club. She joins two other women among its ranks.

“I’m thrilled,” Nichols said. “It’s a great group of people. To be included is such an honor.”

AdAmAn's picturesque hike up Pikes Peak

Nichols, 64, has been a guest on the AdAmAn hike 10 times since she first was invited along in 2000. Some of the two-day climbs have been delightful. Others, not so much.

She was part of the group turned back less than 2 miles from the summit in 2010 by gale force winds and temperatures that plummeted to 25 below zero.

“We’ve had some dreadful weather — 80-mile-per-hour winds — where you don’t think you can go on. And then there are the sunny times, when it’s warm and you’re hiking in shorts.”

Watch this brief video clip that shows a sunny day on the summit as club members load fireworks for the show. Listen to the wind howl!

Nichols is an avid hiker who has trekked in Nepal, Pakistan, Mongolia, Russia, Corsica, Kenya, Tanzania, Peru, Argentina, Spain, Chile and Italy and reached the summit of 47 of Colorado’s 54 fourteeners.

But Pikes Peak, she said, is “a really special mountain.” She has been exploring its forested flanks for nearly five decades, rarely setting foot on Barr Trail, the most popular route up the mountain and the one used during the New Year’s Eve hike.

“There are so many other trails. You can spend days on that mountain and not see anyone.”

The AdAmAn Club gets its name because it adds a man (or woman) each year to its roster.

“I’m very involved in the history of the area, and so the nature of the club is pretty special to me,” Nichols said. “They’re very committed, very dedicated to the tradition.

“And they’re just a great group of guys,” she said of AdAmAn members.

Nichols graduated from Colorado College in 1968 and earned a doctorate in economics from Colorado State University in 1975. She worked for Colorado Springs Utilities for 25 years, retiring in 2002, and now is a consultant to local water districts.

The AdAmAn Club was sparked in 1922 when trail builder Fred Barr and four friends climbed the peak to ring in the new year, setting railroad ties ablaze that could be seen from the city below.

The group returned the next year, and asked a friend to join their merry band. Fireworks, added along the way, now mark the turning of time for tens of thousands of people across the region.

“Sometimes you can’t see a thing up there, it’s so cloudy or windy,” Nichols said of the midnight fireworks show. “Other times it’s clear and the lights of the city are gorgeous.”

“That’s what sucks you in — those wonderful moments, the great people.”

Read about last year's hike, when treacherous weather turned the group back, possibly for the first time ever.  But everyone made it safely off the mountain!

Ann Nichols with Don Sanborn, president of the AdAmAn Club, at her induction ceremony. Courtesy of AdAmAn Club