We reached the top last night in a blinding snow and hail storm, with the lightning snapping and cracking around our heads and the thunder rolling around on all sides of us, below as well as above. But in order to have it clearly understood how it came to be “we,” and how we came to get here, I must go back a little and give an account of the trip since leaving the train at Denver.

The streets of that city are not paved, but they are so hard and smooth most of the year that no one could find any fault with them. The fine sand packs down very hard. The train which I took in Omaha reached Denver so early in the morning that I found very few business men at their stores and so I rode around the principal streets, visited their fine county court-house, which must have cost in the neighborhood of $300,000, and looked with wonder at the snow-capped mountains to be seen at the end of every street, seemingly only a few miles away to the north or west. Streams of clear water run down the gutters of most of the streets, which gives to the city a very cool and refreshed appearance. But one need not look to the streams of water to feel revived; the very air was as crisp and cool as an October morning in Connecticut. It became so cold in the cars the night before that there was no sleep for any one not provided with blankets to cover him, and they tell me this is a sample of their weather all through the summer. In the middle of the day the sun is hot, but in the shade it is never uncomfortable. It is a very dry atmosphere, so that there is very little perspiration to be seen on a person’s face when exercising. For several weeks the salt sweat has run down my forehead, in the heat of the day, and into my eyes, making them smart and look glossy, but here the perspiration dries before it can reach one’s eyebrows. After being taken about the city and entertained by Chief Consul Geo. F. Higgins (a royal good fellow, light complexion, of medium height and build, and wearing a moustache), and after being escorted out of the city by another member of the club,—Mr. F. J. Chamard, also a light complexioned fellow, we started on for Colorado Springs together. J. A. Hasley, a member of the Kansas City Bicycle Club, reached Denver a few days before I did, intending to take a trip in the same direction I was going, and that is how we came to climb Pike’s Peak together.

This chapter, and perhaps others to follow, will give our experiences nearly in the order in which they occurred.

The first thing that surprised me was the sort of grazing country to be seen on all sides. A farmer in Connecticut who would turn his cattle out into such a scanty pasture to get a living would be a fit subject for prosecution by the Humane Society. I had supposed that Colorado was the finest grazing country in the world, and was never more surprised than to see the dry, sandy, brown appearance of the country. Only at a distance did it look green; close to, but a few scanty bunches, or rather spears of grass could be seen. Actually, such fields in the Eastern States would not be considered fit for even sheep pastures. The only way the herds of horses and cattle get a living is by traveling. They are at liberty to roam over thousands of acres, and in that way manage to subsist. The winters are not very severe, but it is no wonder so many cattle perish when the supply of grass, scanty at the best, is covered with a few inches of snow. Irrigation is carried on to a great extent, but from what I can see it was more for the purpose of watering the stock than for bringing the land up to a high state of cultivation. So far I have seen very little land producing a fair crop of fodder, and that is all they intend to raise. There is no turf to be seen growing naturally.

The ride south, from Denver to Colorado Springs, was over a very fair road, although there was probably ten miles of walking in the seventy-five miles. To the east of us was a level or slightly rolling country, while on the other side the snow-covered mountains loomed up apparently only twenty-five miles, but in reality seventy-five miles away. Even the foot-hills, so called, mountains four and five thousand feet above us, were twenty-five miles distant. Such is the clearness of the atmosphere one would think he could walk over to them in a couple of hours. That afternoon, just after the sun had sunk beneath the snowy tops, we struck some Colorado mosquitoes. The first intimation we had of their presence, while riding along at a lively gait, was a prickling sensation all over the calves of our legs, and my stockings were actually black with them. An Eastern mosquito will usually be somewhat embarrassed in his business affairs by a slight motion of the body or a wave of the hand, but these in Colorado are not annoyed in the least by the circular motion of a flying wheelman’s legs, and will alight upon his calves and proceed to business with a dispatch that is equaled nowhere else in the world. And be it said to the credit of their excellent military discipline, they never stop drilling or desert their post till they are crushed or brushed away. Once I jumped from the machine in agony, and such a jar would tend to dislodge an ordinary specimen of this kind of animal, but not so with these; every one remained at work, and thirteen perished at a time from one slap of my hand. Many a dismount resulted nearly as disastrously to the enemy, but this cost too much in time, and brushing away while riding was finally resorted to as the least expensive means of warfare. They seemed to go in swarms like bees, and made a noise nearly as loud. The next morning we rode through another army of them, but the only lasting result of the whole fight has been to give us a very satisfying occupation, whenever there was nothing more important on hand, in scratching the different areas of our legs below the knees and regularly returning to the same locality always with renewed relish.

Prairie dogs were quite common along the road, and they would sit on their little mounds and remonstrate with us in a squeaking voice for disturbing them, till we were close upon them. Jack rabbits were not so common, only three or four having been seen thus far.

That night we walked down a lane to a ranch to find shelter for the night, when a horse, taking fright at our machines, tried to jump over the gate at the foot of the lane, and in doing so, gate, horse, and all came down in a heap together with a crash. The horse jumped up and went off limping, but we thought the next ranch would be a safer place for us, and so we kept on a couple of miles and got an excellent supper, but our bed was on the floor in an old store-room. This slight hardship was soon forgotten in the crisp, cool air of the next morning, and we rode along, hugely enjoying the mountain scenery on our right, till we met a drove of horses and cattle in the road, where barbed-wire fences inclosed the highway on both sides. The horses took fright first and stampeded down the road followed by the cows and calves, the seventy-five or a hundred head leaving a great cloud of dust behind them. The ranchman, who was driving them to water, tried his best, with the vigorous use of his lungs and a shovel in his hands, to stop them by running backwards and forwards across the road, and after we had dismounted and gone clear out to the fence he succeeded in driving them past us. Coming up all out of breath and his eyes flashing with excitement, the full-bearded ranchman yelled, “By J——s, you fellows will get shot down here before you go very far with them things! If my horses had gone over that wire fence, by J——s, I should have wanted to put a hole through you,” then cooling down a little at our expressed regrets, he said, oaths omitted, “a while ago, coming from Denver with a load of oats, I met a couple of fellows on their velocipedes and they were yelling and hollering, and did not offer to stop. My horses saw them first, and started down the hill as if nothing was hitched to them. They turned down the railroad track and took that forty hundred of oats over those ties as if they were feathers. I finally stopped them down in the cut, but I was mad, you bet. Those dudes were strangers around here or they would not have said what they did to me. They told me to go talk to a dog and to do some other things. They did not know enough to keep their mouths shut after they had got me into that fix. So I just pulled my belt gun and held it up. ‘Now,’ says I, ‘you just come back or I will corral you. While I go out and stick up a couple of flags, you just lay down those things and go and pack those bags of oats out here into the road.’ They wouldn’t at first, but finally did, and it did me good to see them New York dudes tugging away at them 300 pound sacks. I unhitched the horses and made them fellows pull the wagon back and load the oats in again, but they emptied both their bottles before they got through.”

To appreciate this story, and the manner in which it was told, one needs to hear it highly spiced, as it was with the huge oaths and many of the strange expressions used out here. The conversation turned on other subjects, and before he finally bade us “good luck,” I learned that droves of mares and a few stallions are turned out loose, and in a short time each stallion has selected his drove of mares to look after and guard, and no mare from any other drove will be allowed to come near his drove. One day a mule tried to get near a drove and the stallion was kept busy all day biting and driving that mule away, who scampered off only to return again to bother the stallion so much he had no chance to eat for hours. With cattle it is the same, the bulls selecting their drove of cows to guard and none from any other drove need apply for admission.

As we traveled south, the range of foot-hills turned to the east until we rode along nearly at the base of them. The top of Pike’s Peak was plainly to be seen over these foot hills all day, and this snow-covered peak seemed to travel south on the other side of this range of hills just as fast as we did. It looked more like a hooded ghost peering over the green hills at us than a mountain peak 14,000 feet high. As we rode along it would go out of sight behind a hill, only to reappear again farther south, always keeping just so far ahead of us. This game of hide and seek did not end till we reached Colorado Springs, where the peak was directly west of us.

We had ridden but a few miles from Denver, when the thin air began to affect me. Hill climbing was out of the question, and the smallest patch of sand or the slightest up grade would make me puff like a winded horse. I tried to breathe entirely through my nose, but the suffocating feeling was unbearable, and so I rode along, mouth wide open. The dry atmosphere parched my tongue and mouth, and my tongue, shriveled to half its size, rattled around in my mouth like a wooden spoon in a bowl. Again I tried to keep my mouth shut, but that was impossible, so I made up my mind to get used to it, and rode miles without any water. Even water would only keep my mouth moist a short time.

We reached Palmer Lake, a pleasant resort 7,000 feet high, about noon. This place is nearly 1,000 feet higher than either Denver or Colorado Springs, and the grade descends both to the north and south. The foot-hills, three or four thousand feet higher, are close by to the west, and to the east the country is a rolling sea of green. But the most beautiful sight of all is the wild flowers. White, red, yellow, blue, purple, violet, in fact all the colors imaginable are seen in great profusion on all sides, acres and acres of nothing else, these beautiful little flowers not over three or four inches high growing so closely together as to crowd out what little green grass tried to grow there. In fact, while all the colors of the rainbow but this one lived closely and happily together, green seemed to be an outcast among them. And the colors which one would naturally think would be pale and faded growing in such a dry and sandy soil were just the opposite. I never saw such vivid colors. The varieties were mostly foreign to me, but I shall always remember the colors. Occasionally, rising above these fields of little flowers, were red and white thistles, red and white cactuses, and Spanish bayonets, or soap weed as they call it, all in full blossom, too.

I can’t begin to describe the delightful ride down from Palmer Lake. The coasting over a road, perfectly smooth, that wound around and over little knolls that gave a wavy motion to the ride; this was enjoyment enough in itself, but to go gliding along without using a muscle in this delightful manner, and see the foot hills, perfectly green to their tops, and the pure white peaks sparkling in the sun rising just above them, all only a mile or two away seemingly, on the right, and to the left these immense fields of the very brightest and most beautiful flowers ever seen, growing close up to the road and stretching out into the distance till their colors were lost in the pale-green of the rolling prairie—to thus imperfectly describe the scene is all I can do; one must see it to realize it.

Saturday morning, early, we reached Manitou, where water power furnishes the hotels with electric lights, and started up Ute Pass on our wheels, to visit the Grand Cavern. We were going to leave our wheels and walk up, but a guide told us it was good riding over the other side of this mountain, from the Cave of the Winds down through Williams CaÑon, back to Manitou; so we pushed the wheels up a mile over a very good carriage road, six or eight hundred feet high, to the Grand Cavern, with the intention of going across, but here the fun commenced. The only way across was by a narrow trail, but the guide at the cavern said it was all down hill, and so we kept on. The trail went down the side of the mountains very steep, and we had not gone far when it was evident it was the wrong trail, and so back we started; but it took us both to get one wheel up at a time, and the way it made us puff—well, strong as we both were it took every ounce of strength we had to get back. After hunting around awhile we found the right trail, and started on in the direction of Williams CaÑon, which was plainly to be seen just below. The trail came to an end at the edge of the caÑon, which was three or four hundred feet straight down, but an immense hole, perhaps twenty-five feet across, went down into the bowels of the mountain about two hundred feet, to the entrance of the Cave of the Winds. Rickety ladders and shaky stairs wound down around the inside of this hole, and down these we must go with our wheels! Yes, the guide was right, it was down hill with a vengeance. We took my wheel first, it being the lightest, and Hasley went down a few rounds on the ladder and then took hold of the big wheel and held it firm so that the rubber tire slid down the ladder. I held on to the handle bar with one hand and the ladder with the other, and thus we reached the bottom of the first ladder, step by step, but safely. The next pair of steep stairs went under the shelving rocks so close that there was not room to get the wheel down, and so we lifted it over the edge of the railing, and I let it down as far as I could with one hand, and Hasley ran down to the next stairs underneath and caught the wheel as I let go. The rest of the stairs were not so steep, but a single misstep at any time would have sent us all to the bottom of this hole in unseemly haste. Getting Hasley’s wheel down was a repetition of our first experience, only his was heavier, and the stairs creaked more, and it was more difficult to get his machine over the railing and let it down at arm’s length, to be caught by the other underneath; but at the entrance of the cave, stairs led down under a boulder, suspended as that one was at the Flume in the White Mountains, and out into the daylight of the caÑon, and we were soon down in the road, hardly realizing how we had got there.

The scenery down the caÑon was so grand, and the whole trip was so exciting, that we did not regret at the end that we had taken our wheels where no other wheels have ever been, and where no other wheels ever ought to be taken again.

While we were taking a late breakfast at the Cliff House at Manitou—Manitou is at the very base and almost surrounded by mountains—a young gentleman asked us if we would escort two young ladies up to the top of Pike’s Peak, and of course we were only too glad to have the opportunity. But at the last moment one of the ladies refused to go, because it would prevent her attending the first hop of the season; and the other lady who was so enthusiastic that her sense of propriety barely prevailed over her intense desire to climb up the peak, said, sadly disappointed, as she left us: “Now I will go up to my room and have a good cry,” and her eyes were already running over.

The scenery up the ravine for two or three miles was magnificent, huge boulders filling the gorge, down which a good-sized stream went dashing over and under these boulders in every conceivable manner. In fact, the sides of the mountains up a thousand feet, were covered with huge boulders just on the point of rolling down, and once in a while between them we could catch a glimpse of the country below. Five miles up the trail, which is a very good foot path, is the Half Way House, and we felt much encouraged to find it had taken us only two hours. But from there up, for four miles, the trail went through timber mostly, and we began to get winded. Hasley kept his mouth shut most of the time, which I could not do from the first; but for two hours we had not a drop of water to drink.

Just below timber line, which is 12,000 feet above the sea, we met parties coming down, three and four at a time, and they encouraged us by saying: “Only four miles farther,” “Keep your strength for the last two miles,” “You will have to leave the trail the last mile and follow the telegraph poles up over the snow.” Still our legs held out all right, but I began to get dizzy whenever I looked up or stooped to drink at a running stream of snow-water. Finally, snow was the only thing to moisten our mouths, but we both drank or ate very sparingly of this. About one thousand feet above timber line we had to cross snow-drifts one or two hundred feet across, and very soon our feet were cold and wet. Sometimes the snow would let us down to our hips, and then we would wallow along to some projecting rocks and climb up. This took my breath the worst of anything, and I laid down on the rocks, completely exhausted sometimes.

About this time a snow-storm commenced, and the wind blew so cold we could only stop a short time to get our wind. The flashes of lightning were getting to be altogether too frequent to be pleasant, and the snow and hail were so blinding we could scarcely see from one telegraph pole to another, for now we had left the trail, and were climbing straight up the side of the peak, with nothing in sight but rocks and boulders half covered with snow. Sometimes we slipped down through these boulders, and then after crawling out, the only thing to do was to lie down with our backs to the driving storm and get rested. When I started on again it was to stagger like a drunken man, for I was dizzy most of the last mile all the time. When we were sure the top must be just over the brow of the steep hill we were slowly climbing, we finally reached there only to see those telegraph poles leading almost straight up into the air and out of sight up the steepest and most rocky hill we had yet encountered. Once in the blinding snow-storm we lost track of the poles, but it was only because one had been blown down, and the next was hidden entirely from view. Finally, after crawling, staggering, and climbing up and over the last mile of rocks, and using up an hour and a half in doing it, I caught sight of a big stone house through the fog and snow, and yelled to Hasley with all the strength I had left, and that wasn’t much: “Look at the chimneys.”

Those who have done any mountain climbing can better imagine our feelings at that moment than I can describe them. Much as we regretted it at first, how thankful we were those ladies had not started up with us, for we never could have reached the top with them. But, as if to repay us for being deprived of their presence, those beautiful little wild flowers accompanied us all the way up, growing brighter in color, if that were possible, the higher up they grew, until on the very top of the peak, 14,147 feet above the sea, we picked a lovely little bouquet from beneath a few inches of snow. These tiny flowers, not more than an inch in height, grow close to a melting drift of snow and ice wherever there is the least bit of sand or soil to nourish them. The two signal service men, Messrs. Ramsay and Potter, did everything possible for us, and in a very short time we were ourselves again. These two men were so kind and considerate toward us, and made us feel so much at home, that we concluded to prolong our stay on the summit until Monday.

Distance traveled on the wheel, 2,075 miles.