Qualla: Pikes Peak International Hill Climb

Pikes Peak International Hill Climb: Introduction

Fri, 30 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit DMSchneider, CC BY-SA 3.0. Seven minutes, fifty-seven seconds. That is all the time Romain Dumas needed in 2018 to hurl an all-electric Volkswagen I.D. R up 12.42 miles of switchbacks, past 156 turns, climbing nearly 5,000 feet to the 14,115-foot summit of Pikes Peak. He shattered the eight-minute barrier that had stood as the sport's holy grail, and he did it without burning a drop of fuel. The Pikes Peak International Hill Climb, known simply as the Race to the Clouds, has been pushing humans and machines to their absolute limits since 1916, making it the second-oldest motorsport event in the United States. Up here, the air is so thin that engines lose a third of their power, brakes fade on endless grades, and a moment's lapse at the edge of a cliff can be fatal.

Image: DMSchneider | CC BY-SA 3.0

Pikes Peak International Hill Climb: A Century of Chasing Clouds

Fri, 30 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ninjalectual, CC BY-SA 4.0. The first Race to the Clouds took place in 1916, when Rea Lentz won the inaugural Penrose Trophy with a time of 20 minutes and 55 seconds. That same year, Floyd Clymer became the first motorcycle winner, riding a British Excelsior up the unpaved mountain road in just under 22 min...

Image: Ninjalectual | CC BY-SA 4.0

Pikes Peak International Hill Climb: Dirt, Gravel, and a Lawsuit

Fri, 30 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Michael Gil from Calgary, AB, Canada, CC BY 2.0. For most of its history, the Race to the Clouds was a dirt-and-gravel affair, with clouds of dust trailing every competitor and loose surfaces demanding rally-style car control. That changed in 2002, when the Sierra Club sued the City of Colorado Springs over erosion damage cause...

Image: Michael Gil from Calgary, AB, Canada | CC BY 2.0

Pikes Peak International Hill Climb: The Electric Revolution

Fri, 30 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit SiedeWerk, CC BY-SA 3.0. Electric cars first appeared at the Race to the Clouds in the early 1980s, when Joe Ball nursed a Sears Electric Car to the summit in a leisurely 32 minutes. By 2013, Nobuhiro Tajima broke ten minutes in his electric E-RUNNER Pikes Peak Special. The following years saw electric e...

Image: SiedeWerk | CC BY-SA 3.0

Pikes Peak International Hill Climb: The Price of Speed

Fri, 30 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bureau of Land Management, Public domain. The mountain has always extracted a cost. Motorcycle racing was part of the event from its inception in 1916, producing legendary competitors and heart-stopping runs along the exposed cliff edges. In 1982, William Gross Jr. was killed when struck by another rider after a fall. Th...

Image: Bureau of Land Management | Public domain

Pikes Peak International Hill Climb: Machines Without Limits

Fri, 30 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jeffrey Beall, CC BY-SA 3.0. What makes the Race to the Clouds unlike any other motorsport event is its radical openness. The Unlimited Division accepts any vehicle that passes safety inspection, producing purpose-built machines that look more like fighter jets on wheels than anything street-legal. Open-whee...

Image: Jeffrey Beall | CC BY-SA 3.0