2:30AM at the Hilton Garden Inn, Colorado Springs Airport
Saturday and Sunday blended together. My plan was to lay down at 7PM, so I could possibly get 8 hours of sleep for race day at the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb. If I played my cards right, I'd be able to get to the highest point allowed for spectators, Devil's Playground. At 13,000 feet, it was a vast, treeless outpost with snow on the ground year-round. On the hill climb's website they warned of extreme altitude sickness, especially for those not accustomed to the mile-high and up altitudes of Denver, Colorado Springs, and the surrounding outdoor playgrounds of the Rocky Mountains.
I came from 800 feet a few days prior. On Saturday, a blinding headache sidelined me for a few hours. Pressure like I'd never felt, the sliver of light that escaped my hotel blinds was a nagging presence as I buried my head in pillows.
The website also warned spectators not to consume alcohol or soda on the mountain, as the carbonation in both would lead to "gastric distress." With that term alone, I decided to stick to water.
In the murky darkness of the renovated hotel room, I tried to figure out how to operate the single cup coffee maker. One cup of water, one bag of coffee, one packet of powdered creamer, one sugar. Downstairs, the front desk guy took one look at my sad cup of coffee and offered the downstairs vat of Kenya blend he'd just brought out.
By 3:00 I was in the car, headed for the shadowy outline of the hills. There's a guy on a motorcycle with Idaho plates, and I follow him from the Springs to the entrance of Pikes Peak Highway. It's a two-lane lined with old diners and souvenir shops; I'd scouted it out the day before.
We're funneled into a holding area, a North Pole-themed amusement park parking lot where dozens of idling cars had already gathered. I killed the engine and fired up my battery-powered radio. A Mazda 3 is parked in front of me and four young guys pile out and light up cigarettes. Most of them are in basketball shorts, the temperature here is around 50-degrees.
Twenty minutes later, our group of six cars is released and we snake up towards the gate. It takes us about six miles to reach the pits, which were assembled ahead of the start line. Driving under the start line, I snapped a picture, then watched as the outside temperature on my digital display dropped into the forties.
On the way up I was stuck behind two wheezing Chrysler products, not to mention I was in one as well. My grandparents were kind enough to lend me their Jeep Commander on short notice and, although it had a comfy ride and some amenities alien to their other Jeeps (two early-2000s Cherokees), it had one major failing.
Jeep, for some reason, had chosen to stick their garden-variety, 3.7-liter V6 into the Commander, a 4600-pound Land Rover Discovery look alike. This meant 210 horsepower at sea level and god knows how many at 9000 feet and above.
Directly in front of me was a Chrysler Pacifica with Iowa plates. The guy behind the wheel was playing an infuriating tap dance with the brakes on the climb up, but it was probably because the car in front of him was a Dodge Neon.
By the time we'd breached the timberline, the sky had turned an inky purple, with wisps of clouds and an eerie, blanketed view of the far horizon that I caught glimpses of out the side window.
That eerie feeling continued as we reached the parking lot at Devil's Playground. Clouds coated the landscape in a thick fog, lights of one police car blocking the road up bounced off as people wandered out of their cars trying to get their bearings.
The quiet at that altitude is jarring. Since there's hardly air for the sound to get trapped in, you can hear conversations happening 50 yards away. As I walk around the parking lot, I peek into cars. most people are asleep, huddled in blankets. Two bodies snugly seated upright inside a 911 Turbo; a guy behind my car sleeps alone in his Lexus SUV, the breaking morning sun illuminates the interior like a floodlight.
It's hard to describe the feeling. Being outside at the end of June in a Stormtech coat, when it's 40-degrees one minute and sunny the next. Or the fact that it's still a racing event that attracts racing spectators--people were drinking Coors by 10a.m.--but one that almost by design still attracts the diehards.
8:01AM, Time to Race to the Clouds
Motorcycles were the first group to run, starting at 8a.m. It was hard to make out the sequence of cars and bikes running, because there's no qualifying information on the race website. I learned the day before at the Penrose Museum that officials still have issues with timekeeping, thanks to the harsh geographical setting.
An alarm sounded the arrival of Ohio State's electric motorcycle. The thing sounded like a hyperactive go kart as it shot by, giving a little wiggle as it slightly lost traction out of the corner. One of the kids from their team spoke to me at fan fest, telling me they were hoping to break the ten minute mark.
Electric cars and motorcycles have a long history at the hill climb, dating back to 1981, when Joe Ball took 32 minutes to reach the peak after stopping near the finish line to let his batteries cool.
Tim Eckert, part of a long lineage of hill climb competitors, set a new record for electric cars in 2002 with his Compact Power ER2. The 1300-pound, single seat racer built in Monument, Colorado was powered by a 223-horsepower electric motor and several LG Large Cell lithium ion batteries.
French rally driver Sebastien Loeb still holds the all-time record of 8:13, but EVs are sure to catch up. Nobuhiro Tajima, already twice a Hill Climb record breaker by 2012, set a blistering sub-9 minute qualifying run in his EV, but the car didn't finish due to a power transfer problem on race day. In 2013, Carlin Dunne won the motorcycle title overall on a Lightning fully-electric motorcycle. By 2015, Rhys Millen had cracked the ten-minute mark with a 9:07 run in a Drive eO PP03.
This year there was only one electric car competing, the Faraday Future FF91. This imitation Model X with a matte black vinyl wrap. It finished with a middle-of-the-field time of 11:25, just ahead of a 2002 Camaro, piloted by hometown favorite Rob Moberly.
Electric motorcycles fared much better, there were three of them. The Buckeye Current finished a minute shy of its goal, while another electric motorcycle ridden by Japanese racer Yoshihiro Kishimoto did a 10:59 run.
As the day wound on, the weather started to change. The changes got quicker as the temperature down in Colorado Springs got higher. One minute, I'd have my hoodie up to block the sun; the next, I'd have hat and gloves on trying to stay warm.
People filtered back to their cars to nap, eat, and stay hydrated. During the day I ate three cups of greek yogurt, four giant pieces of fried chicken, half a dozen oatmeal creme pies, a bag of goldfish crackers, three apples, and three bananas. Not to mention drinks.
Early in the day I had to focus on not winding myself too much by walking around. Later in the day it had gotten better, because then I knew I had enough food to last until 4 or 5 in the afternoon, when the race was over. But it was a weird game of modern, city folk survivalism. I saw several people throughout the day who seemed to be idling their cars the entire time.
By 2PM, the weather had gotten downright dicey. Thunder cracked in the distance. Dark clouds closed in on the picturesque mountain vistas I'd photographed earlier that morning. Now it looked like a Game of Thrones set. Winter was in fact coming.
One of the last drivers to make the summit was Yuri Kouznetsov, driving a Nissan Skyline. Kouznetsov was Jeremy Foley's co-driver in 2012, when his Mistubishi Lancer tumbled over the edge near 16-mile.
Kouznetsov blasted through thick fog on one of the last straightaways towards the summit, and I couldn't help but wonder if he was thinking of that moment back in 2012.
Despite a lack of guardrails and general danger inherent to a race like this, only six people have lost their lives during the Pikes Peak Hill Climb. Chock that up to strict safety regulations, a mutual respect for the mountain, or luck, but it's probably a combination of all those things.
Around three, we started seeing quarter-sized hail, and people rushed to their cars for a spot in line to get down the mountain. A guy in a Nissan Xterra raged as another man in an old Suburban came from the far end of the lot and drove straight down the open aisle to the front of the line.
But the police said it'd be another hour until we even got going, that four more cars were set to run, and officials would wait until 3:30 to call it for weather.
Those remaining four ended up running only to Glen Cove, several miles down the course. Although the race has never been cancelled, despite fire, hail, wind, rain, and snow over the years, it has been postponed and shortened due to the weather.
By word of mouth, we discovered that the cars that had reached the summit were coming down for a parade lap. One young kid asked a police officer if his group could walk out to the road, and on the officer's approval, a flood of people walked out onto the Pikes Peak Highway. A line of spectators stretched for a quarter mile as drivers started their way down.
But the good nature of the crowd was short lived. Animal instinct kicked in as people battled to get out of the parking lot first. Near the front of the line, a Ford F150 driver bucked at a Subaru Legacy, boxing him out to get one place ahead in the traffic line. Soon, people behind me started reversing to cut around the outside edge of the parking lot. I was parked in the middle and somehow got out last.
As I turned left, away from the snaking line of traffic that continued all the way to Colorado Springs, I thought about the drivers, teams, families that spend all year to get to this perilously long day.
In 1916, Rea Lentz took home $2,000 and the Penrose trophy at the first running of the Pikes Peak Hill Climb. Today, winners take home even less money. Participants accept that they're probably going to lose out financially, but gain in areas of automotive innovation and fan enthusiasm.
Even more, they gain something that's virtually gone in modern, professional motorsport: the mythical, local lure of a race so unique that it's yet to be duplicated. In many ways, it can't be.
Here are some more of my favorite photos from the race:
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