Meanwhile, new ADA-accessible concrete walkways outside give visitors a safer experience of the summit’s lauded viewshed. It’s intended to meet strict sustainability metrics known as the Living Building Challenge, and will still sell visitors famous donuts produced from what staff say is the world’s highest-altitude deep fat fryer. The new building offers interactive exhibits detailing weather, ecosystem and human history atop the mountain. The gleaming glass and steel summit house at the top of Pikes Peak is about three times the size of the previous visitors center, a structure built in the 1960s that workers will continue demolishing into September of this year.

“It was three years of just 10 guys hanging around together and it's nice to see some new faces after that.” “We took so many things apart and then we had to put it all back together and here it is back better than new,” Huber said as he welcomed passengers off the train. Hart Van Denburg/CPR News The breathtaking scenery when one steps off the Broadmoor Manitou and Pikes Peak Cog Railway after making the 9-mile ride to the 14,115 feet summit of Pikes Peak, Tuesday, June 8, 2021. Hart Van Denburg/CPR News Crews work to complete the new Summit House on Pikes Peak, Tuesday, June 8, 2021.

Hart Van Denburg/CPR News An epic spot for a selfie on Pikes Peak, Tuesday, June 8, 2021. He and his railway colleagues did much of the extensive renovation themselves. The train began taking passengers up the steeply-angled mountain track again this May.ĭuring a recent stop at the summit, conductor Steve Huber said it was a relief to see the train operating again. The Broadmoor Hotel, a luxury resort in Colorado Springs, owns the Pikes Peak Cog Railway and put $100 million into renovating the historic attraction. Long said her office broadly expects tourism this year to the Pikes Peak region to be up 35 or 40 percent over 2020, though their current projections based on sales tax collections predict still slightly less tourism money coming in compared with 2019. It’s not yet clear if enthusiasm for travel in light of easing COVID-19 restrictions will bring in the million or more summit visitors seen in a typical year. Temperatures at the peak can often be 30 or 40 degrees colder than those at the base of the mountain. Hart Van Denburg/CPR News Visitors step out onto the platform of the 14,115 feet summit of Pikes Peak, Tuesday, June 8, 2021.Ĭrews on the two immensely complex projects, both years in the making, had to contend with regular construction delays resulting from extreme weather conditions on the 14-thousand foot summit. Hart Van Denburg/CPR News The Broadmoor Manitou and Pikes Peak Cog Railway, Tuesday, June 8, 2021.

Hart Van Denburg/CPR News Shu Schiller, at left, talks with conductors David Van gamble, center, and Carolyn Given, right, aboard the 9-mile ride aboard the Broadmoor Manitou and Pikes Peak Cog Railway to the 14,115 feet summit of Pikes Peak, Tuesday, June 8, 2021.

“It almost feels like a miracle that they came together at the same time,” said Amy Long, chief innovation officer for Visit Colorado Springs, a local nonprofit focused on tourism marketing. Local boosters hope the two attractions combined with a post-lockdown nation eager to travel will add up to a return to normal for regional tourism. But now, riders can soon ride the train again, and just in time: A brand new, $65 million Summit House Complex at the top of America’s Mountain is set to open next week. If you wanted to take a train to the top of Pikes Peak, for the last three years, you haven’t been able to.

Cog railroad