So I've lived in Colorado for most of the last 22 years, although with several stretches temporarily residing elsewhere during that time. It feels about time to drive the short distance south and explore Pike’s Peak Country and drive to the summit. That’s one of the first things many tourists to the state do, and still haven’t done it yet!

Pike’s Peak is one of America’s best known mountains . It’s probably the Colorado peak the most people who live outside the state could name. There are a couple reasons for it. One is that it is so prominent, towering almost 8,000 feet above the plains at Colorado Springs. Most other peaks in the state don’t have such a great altitude difference from the land around them. Pike’s Peak is also the "Purple Mountain Majesty" in the patriotic song “America the Beautiful” kids learn in school. I remember singing the song and knowing about Pike’s Peak when I was only in fourth grade in Yonkers, New York.

Pike’s Peak is only one of Colorado’s 54 “fourteeners”, the 14,000 foot peaks in the state. But also it is also the most accessible for visitors. Pike’s is one of two fourteeners with a paved access road to the summit, and one that’s open for much of the year weather permitting. The other, the one up Mount Evan’s, is only open from Memorial Day to Labor Day. But not only that, Pike’s Peak has a cog railway to the summit from Manitou Springs and is home of one of those he-man races where people compete in an annual run up the Barr Trail, the access trail to the summit from Manitou .

I have actually been to the summit once before. Around 1994 I was climbing a lot of the fourteeners and went with a group of my co-workers at the legislature one May weekend to hike up Pike’s Peak from the higher west side base at Mueller State Park. The starting elevation there is just below 10,000 feet so much less than the hike up from Manitou Springs. It was a long grueling climb, though, but it had been a rather warm dry winter so we encountered only a few snow patches despite it being May. I recall getting to the top, feeling exhausted and having a touch of altitude sickness, and being accosted by fascinated Texans who took the cog rail up and wanted to have their pictures taken with us “Real-live Colorado mountain men” who walked all the way up the mountain.

The 19-mile drive up Pike’s Peak from Ute Pass is a long and pleasant one on a good road, the top half of which was paved in 2011. I found the views to be less frightening that some other roads in Colorado or even Trail Ridge Road in Rocky Mountain National Park . There aren’t many edges with steep drop-offs where you’d crash a thousand feet down if you took a turn a little too wide. The scenery from the top is appropriately described as “breathtaking”, or is that just the lack of oxygen?

Pike’s Peak differs from many of the others I’ve climbed in Colorado in the sense of standing alone far from any other peaks of similar height. From the summit you can see directly out to the plains to the east, a broad valley to the west with a significant distance to the next very high range (the Sangre de Christos), and lower peaks to the north and south. You don’t find yourself at the summit in a sea of jagged peaks to the horizon in most directions as you do on the top of some other fourteeners around Colorado such as in the San Juan Mountains.