Pikes Peak is My New Address
It's Where the Heavens Meet the Earth
It was always visible from the highway between the town of Beulah, where I lived, and the city of Pueblo, where I worked, shopped, or visited friends and family. Looking north across the plains, there it was. For half a century, Colorado’s easternmost fourteener, Pikes Peak, has been a landmark that I saw, often from a moving vehicle, from about fifty miles away. Snow-covered much of the year, Pikes Peak seemed rather distant from my home turf, but it was always there to the north on those drives, the prominent peak in Colorado’s southern Front Range.
Sometimes called America’s Mountain, the 14,115 foot Pikes Peak, named after explorer Zebulon Pike, has several other names. To the people of the Ute tribe, it is known as Tava-Kaavi (Sun Mountain). The Arapahoe people call it Heey-otoyoo’ (Long Mountain), while to the Pawnees, it is Tus-Peh, which means Where the Heavens Touch the Earth.
I can’t say that I had much of a connection to Pikes Peak beyond it being the prominent mountain in my northern viewshed. Unlike Greenhorn Mountain, Saint Charles Peak, and Signal Mountain, high points or prominent landmarks around the town of Beulah and mountains that I’ve hiked, I never considered Pikes Peak as in my immediate neighborhood. It was visible, but distant.
But that is no longer the case. After all those years living in Beulah, Helene and I sold our long-time home this past September. We now live in the Colorado Springs area, the city above which Pikes Peak rises. While waiting for the right property to buy but have not yet found, for the past couple of months we’ve been house-sitting in a house right at the base of Pikes Peak. The house is located in the small town of Manitou Springs just west of Colorado Springs. Pikes Peak is no longer a distant mountain – it is now right there, looming high above the town. Look out of any of the house’s west-facing windows, and there it is, its summit rising nearly 8000 feet above Manitou Springs.
I can already feel a connection forming between me and Pikes Peak. Seeing the sun’s first morning rays hit the peak before reaching any of the lowlands, it is easy to understand why the Utes called it Sun Mountain. I’ve hiked many trails in the area, including the lower parts of Barr Trail that takes hikers to its summit. I hope to hike Barr Trail to the top of Pikes Peak in 2026, as soon as the trail is snow free.
I’ve watched the mountain in many of its moods – birthing thunderstorms; dancing in and out of fast-moving clouds; seeing the autumn gold of quaking aspens add their brilliance to the mountain’s forested slopes; admiring its summit dressed in fresh snow; watching the peak fade into the darkness as the evening sky loses its last light.
I am only at the very beginning of getting to know this magnificent mountain that I am now living so much closer to. I have a feeling this mountain and I are going to be spending lots of time together these next several years.
As always, beautiful.
Such a gift to have so close to home.
Lovely photos, Dave, and thanks for the introduction to Sun Mountain from your new vantage point! Since I learned the Ute name, I have much preferred it to the Anglo name. As you point out, Sun Mountain is so much more descriptive of how it catches the first light at dawn and how it holds the sunsets and catches the eye in all moods. Enjoy your time house-sitting right at the mountain's base!