Pikes Peak descent
Distance: 27.02 km
Elevation Gain: 47 m
Elevation Loss: 1787 m
Difficulty:
102 (Easy)
FIETS Index: 0.00 FIETS
Avg Grade: -6.44 %
Max cat climb: 5
Min elevation: 2558 m
Max elevation: 4296 m
Ride Category:
Flat
Pikes Peak, above Colorado Springs in Colorado, USA, has given the country a song, a motor race and one of its hardest bike climbs. Zebulon Pike, after whom it is named, failed to reach the top in 1806, and the first recorded ascent came in 1820. In 1915 Spencer Penrose built a highway to the 4,302-metre summit, still the second-highest paved road in North America. The next year he founded a motor race to promote it, the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb, still held every summer. But the mountain’s most famous visitor came earlier, in 1893: Katharine Lee Bates went up by wagon and mule, and the view from the top inspired the poem that became “America the Beautiful”.
This ride descends the Pikes Peak Highway, fully paved only since 2011, from the summit. Cyclists race up the same road in Cycle to the Summit, where John Keller set the men’s record of 1 hour 7 minutes 54 seconds in 2025. Just below the top the road crosses the Devil’s Playground, named for the lightning that jumps between its rocks. It then drops below the tree line through the famous “W” switchbacks to Glen Cove, where rangers check drivers’ brake temperatures on the way down. Lower down come the Halfway Picnic Ground, the Hill Climb start line and Crystal Creek Reservoir, before the ride finishes in the forest near the highway’s well-known Bigfoot crossing sign.
