About 80 percent of the folks who do this tour are flatlanders who aren’t acclimatized to altitude. Our guide and support van driver, Jake Owens, was certified in wilderness first aid and made sure everyone understood the risks we were taking. Our tour was run by Broadmoor Outfitters, one of four companies permitted to operate guided bike tours down the mountain highway.
Now it was time to don full-face helmets, elbow pads and knee pads and head down the peak on fat-tired cruisers. We had ridden up the mountain via the historic Manitou and Pikes Peak Cog Railway - reopened last year following a three-year, $100-million renovation - which was filled to capacity with tourists oohing and aahing at the views. There are ways to enjoy this magnificent peak without driving up in the family car - subject to timed entry reservations for the first time this year - and this is a great way to go. Yet seven visitors from four states were about to hop on single-gear BMX mountain bikes for a guided 13-mile ride down the mountain with a descent of nearly 5,000 feet. It was chilly on the 14,115-foot summit of the peak locals call “America’s Mountain.” The temperature probably was in the 40s and monsoon rain was in the forecast. The “fruited plain” Katharine Lee Bates celebrated in “America the Beautiful” - after her trip to the summit via prairie wagon in 1893 - was hidden by a denser layer of clouds far below. Wisps, speckles and tendrils of cottony clouds clung to slopes beneath the famous summit of Pikes Peak.
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