Qualla: Pikes Peak

Pikes Peak: Introduction

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CmndrFish, CC BY 4.0. The Pawnee called it Tus Peh - Where the Heavens Touch the Earth. The Ute people named it Tava-Kaavi, Sun Mountain, and their oral history says they were created on its slopes. Zebulon Pike, the Army officer who gave the peak its European name, never actually reached the top. Standing in waist-deep snow in November 1806, his soldiers wearing only light overalls and no stockings, Pike stared at the summit still miles away and wrote in his journal that he believed no human being could ascend to its pinnacle. Fourteen years later, a young botanist named Edwin James proved him wrong, climbing to 14,115 feet in two days and discovering Colorado's state flower, the blue columbine, along the way.

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Image: CmndrFish | CC BY 4.0

Pikes Peak: The Mountain of Many Names

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit David Shankbone, CC BY-SA 3.0. Before it was Pikes Peak, the mountain carried a catalog of identities. The Tabeguache band of the Ute people - whose name means 'People of Sun Mountain' - considered it sacred, a place of creation. The Arapaho knew it as Long Mountain. European explorers called it El Capitan, Gr...

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Image: David Shankbone | CC BY-SA 3.0

Pikes Peak: The Song at the Summit

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tokeamour, CC BY-SA 4.0. In July 1893, Katharine Lee Bates, an English professor from Wellesley College who had been suffering from depression, traveled to Colorado Springs to teach a summer course. She made the trip to the summit by wagon and mule, and the panoramic view from 14,115 feet unlocked someth...

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Image: Tokeamour | CC BY-SA 4.0

Pikes Peak: Race to the Clouds

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit DrunkDriver, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Pikes Peak Highway winds its way from Cascade to the summit along a series of switchbacks so treacherous at speed they are called 'The W's.' Since 1916, the road has hosted the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb, one of the oldest motor races in America. In 1913, William Way...

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Image: DrunkDriver | CC BY-SA 3.0

Pikes Peak: Thin Air and High Doughnuts

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Salim Virji, CC BY-SA 2.0. At the summit, the partial pressure of oxygen drops to about 60 percent of sea level. Water boils at a lower temperature, altitude sickness lurks for the unacclimated, and the Summit House sells what may be America's most unusual baked goods: high-altitude doughnuts, fried at a r...

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Image: Salim Virji | CC BY-SA 2.0

Pikes Peak: A Summit Above the Permafrost

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Alexander Migl, CC BY-SA 4.0. The uppermost portion of Pikes Peak, above 14,000 feet, was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1961. The summit has a polar climate classification - snow can fall in any month, and afternoon thunderstorms bring winds that gust to hurricane force. Since 1969, the U.S. Army h...

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Image: Alexander Migl | CC BY-SA 4.0