Ini dia pemandangan yang terlihat sejak kereta keluar dari stasiun sampai ke Summit Pikes Peak. Wow bukan? Ya ... Kami bertiga sungguh sangat takjub melihat indahnya pemandangan di sepanjang jalan dan di puncak bukit. Sejak awal kereta berjalan, tour leader yang ada di dalam kereta sudah memberika
n introduksi menarik mengenai lokasi wisata yang akan kami kunjungi. Dalam situsnya, http://www.springsgov.com/SectionIndex.aspx?SectionID=18, tertera keterangan sebagai berikut: Welcome to Pikes Peak - America's Mountain! The Pikes Peak Highway entrance is conveniently located 15 minutes west of Colorado Springs on Highway 24. The beauty of being so close to the city is that you can spend your time enjoying the mountain instead of getting to the mountains. Plan for your round trip journey to the summit to take 2-3 hours. The safe, scenic highway provides you the opportunity to enjoy Pikes Peak at your leisure. From the gateway 
at an elevation of 7,400 feet, you’ll encounter some of the most breath taking scenery in the world as you wind your way through an alpine wonderland of scenic beauty, mountain reservoirs, beyond timberline, overtaking the clouds…all along the way to the 14,115 foot summit of America’s most famous mountain. Along the way, you’ll discover the North Slope Recreation Area, Crystal Reservoir Gift Shop, Historic Glen Cove Inn, and the Summit House. There are three lakes for fishing, picnic areas, hiking trails, and breathtaking views. Stop and watch one of our "Meet the Ranger" Interpretive Programs and learn about the history, myths, flora and fauna on the mountain. All offer visitor services and basic neces
sities to make your day both enjoyable and memorable. Singkatnya, sebenarnya tempat wisata yang akan kami kunjungi adalah pegunungan dengan pemandangannya yang luar biasa. Kata wikipedia: Pikes Peak (originally Pike's Peak) is a mountain in the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains within Pike National Forest, 10 mi (16 km) west of Colorado Springs, Colorado, in El Paso County in the United States of America. Originally called "El Capitán" by Spanish explorers, the mountain was renamed Pike's Peak after Zebulon Pike, Jr., an explorer who led an expedition to the southern Colorado area in 1806. The Arapaho name is heey-otoyoo’ ("long mountain"). Selanjutnya wikipedia mengatakan: At 14,115 feet (4,302 m), it is one of Colorado's 54 fourteeners, mountains that rise more than 14,000 feet (4
,300 m) above mean sea level, and rises 8,000 ft (2,400 m) above downtown Colorado Springs. Pikes Peak is a designated National Historic Landmark. Pikes Peak is the easternmost fourteen thousand foot peak in the United States, located 10 miles (16 km) west of the city of Colorado Springs. Pikes Peak is composed of a characteristic pink granite called Pikes Peak granite. The color is due to a large amount of potassium feldspar. It is thought that the granite was once magma that crystallized at least 20 miles (32 km) beneath the Earth's surface, formed by an igneous intrusion during the Precambrian, approximately 1.05 billion ye
ars ago, during the Grenville orogeny. Through the process of uplifting, the hardened rock pushed through the Earth's crust and created a dome-like mountain, covered with less resistant rock. Years of erosion and weathering removed the soil and rock leaving the exposed mountain. Soils on Pikes Peak are classified as Cirque Land above timberline; forests at lower altitudes are mostly supported by brown stony sandy loam of the Catamount or Ivywild series. The first European-American to climb the peak came 14 years after Pike in the summer of 1820. Edwin James, a young student who had just graduated from Middlebury College 
in Vermont, signed on as the relief botanist for the Long Expedition after the first botanist had died. The expedition explored the South Platte River up as far as present-day Denver, then turned south and passed close to what James called "Pike's highest peak." James and two other men left the expedition, camped on the plains, and climbed the peak in two days, encountering little difficulty. Along the way, he was the first to describe the blue columbine, Colorado's state flower. Gold was di scove red in the area of present-day Denver in 1858, and newspapers referred to the gold-mining area as "Pike's Peak." Pike's Peak or Bust became the slogan of the Colorado Gold Rush (see also Fifty-Niner). This was more due to Pikes Pe
ak's visibility to gold seekers traveling west across the plains than any actual significant gold find anywhere near Pikes Peak. Major gold deposits were not discovered in the Pikes Peak area until the Cripple Creek Mining District was discovered southwest of Pikes Peak, and led in 1893 to one of the last major gold rushes in the lower forty-eight states. In July 1860, Clark, Gruber and Company commenced minting gold coins in Denver bearing the phrase "Pike's Peak Gold" and an artist's rendering of the peak (site unseen) on the obverse. In 1863 the U.S. Treasury purchased the minting equipment for $25,000 to open the Denver Mint. Julia and James Holmes traveled to the Rocky Mountains in Colorado in 1858, a
nd reached the summit on August 5, with J. D. Miller and George Peck, making Julia Archibald Holmes the first woman to climb Pikes Peak. From the summit, she wrote in a letter to her mother: "Nearly everyone tried to discourage me from attempting it, but I believed that I should succeed; and now here I am, and I feel that I would not have missed this glorious sight for anything at all.” Thirty-five years later, in July 1893, Katharine Lee Bates wrote the song "America the Beautiful", after having admired the view from the top of Pikes Peak. It appeared in print in The Congregationalist, a weekly journal, on July 4, 1895.
A plaque commemorating the words to the song was placed at the summit. On July 17, 1913 William Wayne Brown drove his car, the Bear Cat, twenty miles to the summit. The ascent took 5 hours and 28 minutes. The uppermost portion of Pikes Peak, above 14,000 feet (4,300 m) elevation, was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1961. Pikes Peak was the home of a ski resort from 1939 until 1984. There are several visitor centers on Pikes Peak, some with a gift shop and restaurant. These centers are located at the 6 mile , 12-mile (19 km) and the summit itself, and there are several ways to ascend the mountain. The Manitou and Pike's Peak Railway is a cog railroad operating from Manitou Springs to the summ
it year-round, conditions permitting. Automobiles can be driven to the summit via the Pikes Peak Highway, a 19 mi (31 km) road that starts a few miles up Ute Pass at Cascade. This road, which until October 2011 was unpaved after the halfway point, was made famous worldwide by the short film Climb Dance featuring Ari Vatanen racing his Peugeot automobile up the steep, twisty slopes as part of the annual Pikes Peak International Hill Climb race. The road has a series of switchbacks, treacherous at high speed, called "The W's" for their shape on the side of the mountain. The road is maintained by the city of Colorado Springs as a toll road. A project to pave the remainder of the road was completed on Octobe
r 1, 2011. The project is in response to a suit by the Sierra Club over damage caused by the gravel and sediment that is constantly washed off the road into the alpine environment. The road remained open during construction. The most popular hiking route to the top is called Barr Trail, which approaches the summit from the east. The trailhead is just past the cog railway depot in Manitou Springs. Visitors can walk, hike, or bike the trail. Although the Barr Trail is rated only Class 1 it is a long and arduous hike with nearly 8,000 feet of elevation gain, and a 13 mile trip one-way. Runners race to the top and back on Barr Trail in the annual Pikes Peak 
Marathon. Another route begins at Crags Campground, approaching the summit from the west. At the peak, the partial pressure of oxygen is only about 60% of that at sea level, so a faster rate of respiration is required by those not regularly at high altitudes. Those familiar with altitude training know that prolonged exposure to the reduced pressures of high altitudes will produce more red blood cells to offset the lower oxygen availability. For the unacclimated, altitude sickness may develop in those who are sensitive or who over-exert themselves. Conditions at the top are typical of a high alpine environment. Snow is a possibility any time year
-round, and thunderstorms are common in the summer. Since 1969, the summit of Pikes Peak has been the site of the United States Army Pike’s Peak Research Laboratory, a medical research laboratory for the assessment of the impact of high altitude on human physiological and medical parameters of military interest. Wuih ... Panjang banget kutipan dari wikipedia yang ditulis disini hehehe ... Ya ... Informasi sejarah mengenai tempat ini memang bisa didapatkan dari mana saja. Yang kutahu, selama aku naik kereta ini dan menuju ke Summit Pikes Peak, yang kulihat adalah daratan maha luas yang seolah tak ada habisnya. Saat kereta menaiki punggung pegunungan dan wisat
awan bisa melihat keindahan alam yang tiada taranya ini, yang terdengar adalah suara penuh kekaguman dari para wisatawan. Pegunungan yang maha luas ini seolah memiliki warna yang tidak sama. Nampak warna hijau di kejauhan, warna hitam di tengah punggung bukit, warna biru telaga/danau, warna abu-abu pohon pinus, dan seterusnya. Dengan latar belakang langit berwarna biru terang dan awan putih yang berarak, lengkap sudah keindahan alam ciptaan Tuhan ini. O ya ... Kami juga berkesempatan melihat salju di salah satu bagian punggung pegunungan yang kami lewati. Salju ini sepertinya merupakan salju abadi. Mengingat suhu udara saat ini lumayan hangat (summer) yang ada dalam pikiran kami adalah salju akan meleleh karena panas. Namun yang terjadi tidak de
mikian. Salju tersebut seperti batu (keras) yang tidak mudah leleh begitu saja karena panas matahari. Lalu kami juga melihat bebatuan yang tersebar di mana-mana. Batu-batuan berukuran besar dan kecil berwarna kecoklatan dan merah mendominasi punggung pegunungan yang berdekatan dengan puncak pegunungan. Saat kereta berhenti di sebuah area karena berpapasan dengan kereta lain (rel gantian dipakai), kami melihat pemandangan luar biasa di depan kami. Ah ... Isi wisata kali ini adalah takjub, kagum, heran dan setengahnya nggak percaya melihat keindahan yang ada di sekitar kami. Saat kereta sampai di Summit Pikes Peak, kami diberi kesempatan untuk menikmati keindahan tempat wisata ini selam
a 20 menit. Ada toko penjual cindera mata dan makanan yang ada di area ini. Sebagai informasi, untuk bisa sampai ke tempat ini, selain naik kereta, wisatawan juga bisa naik jeep, naik motor, naik helikopter atau bahkan naik sepeda atau berjalan kaki. Ha? Memang beitulah kenyataanya ... Namun, jelas kami memilih naik kereta mengingat review perjalanan wisata dengan kereta disini sangatlah direkomendasikan hehehe ... O ya ... Tour leader kami mengatakan bahwa toko souvenir di sini menjual donat terenak sedunia. Sayangnya aku nggak sempat beli, karena antriannya puanjang buanget. Bayangkan, kami hanya diberi waktu 20 menit untuk ke toilet, belanja dan ambil gambar. Selain ambil gambar, baik ke toilet
maupun belanja, kedua-duanya memiliki antrian yang panjang. Jelas saja kami, para wisatawan, harus memilih mana yang terpenting. Ke toilet, mau nggak mau kalo perlu kan harus mengantri hehehe ... Sesudahnya, jelas ambil gambar, karena waktu yang tersedia terbatas. Baru kalo ada sisa waktu, beli donat. Aku sebenarnya dah ikut ngantri beli donat selama 2 menit, sayangnya, antrian nggak maju-maju hahaha ... Akhirnya, batal deh mencicipi donat terlezat sedunia ... Sebagai gantinya, papa mendapatkan banyak sekali gambar cantik sejak dari berangkat, sampai dan pulang di acara wisata naik kereta kali ini yay ...
n introduksi menarik mengenai lokasi wisata yang akan kami kunjungi. Dalam situsnya, http://www.springsgov.com/SectionIndex.aspx?SectionID=18, tertera keterangan sebagai berikut: Welcome to Pikes Peak - America's Mountain! The Pikes Peak Highway entrance is conveniently located 15 minutes west of Colorado Springs on Highway 24. The beauty of being so close to the city is that you can spend your time enjoying the mountain instead of getting to the mountains. Plan for your round trip journey to the summit to take 2-3 hours. The safe, scenic highway provides you the opportunity to enjoy Pikes Peak at your leisure. From the gateway at an elevation of 7,400 feet, you’ll encounter some of the most breath taking scenery in the world as you wind your way through an alpine wonderland of scenic beauty, mountain reservoirs, beyond timberline, overtaking the clouds…all along the way to the 14,115 foot summit of America’s most famous mountain. Along the way, you’ll discover the North Slope Recreation Area, Crystal Reservoir Gift Shop, Historic Glen Cove Inn, and the Summit House. There are three lakes for fishing, picnic areas, hiking trails, and breathtaking views. Stop and watch one of our "Meet the Ranger" Interpretive Programs and learn about the history, myths, flora and fauna on the mountain. All offer visitor services and basic necessities to make your day both enjoyable and memorable. Singkatnya, sebenarnya tempat wisata yang akan kami kunjungi adalah pegunungan dengan pemandangannya yang luar biasa. Kata wikipedia: Pikes Peak (originally Pike's Peak) is a mountain in the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains within Pike National Forest, 10 mi (16 km) west of Colorado Springs, Colorado, in El Paso County in the United States of America. Originally called "El Capitán" by Spanish explorers, the mountain was renamed Pike's Peak after Zebulon Pike, Jr., an explorer who led an expedition to the southern Colorado area in 1806. The Arapaho name is heey-otoyoo’ ("long mountain"). Selanjutnya wikipedia mengatakan: At 14,115 feet (4,302 m), it is one of Colorado's 54 fourteeners, mountains that rise more than 14,000 feet (4,300 m) above mean sea level, and rises 8,000 ft (2,400 m) above downtown Colorado Springs. Pikes Peak is a designated National Historic Landmark. Pikes Peak is the easternmost fourteen thousand foot peak in the United States, located 10 miles (16 km) west of the city of Colorado Springs. Pikes Peak is composed of a characteristic pink granite called Pikes Peak granite. The color is due to a large amount of potassium feldspar. It is thought that the granite was once magma that crystallized at least 20 miles (32 km) beneath the Earth's surface, formed by an igneous intrusion during the Precambrian, approximately 1.05 billion years ago, during the Grenville orogeny. Through the process of uplifting, the hardened rock pushed through the Earth's crust and created a dome-like mountain, covered with less resistant rock. Years of erosion and weathering removed the soil and rock leaving the exposed mountain. Soils on Pikes Peak are classified as Cirque Land above timberline; forests at lower altitudes are mostly supported by brown stony sandy loam of the Catamount or Ivywild series. The first European-American to climb the peak came 14 years after Pike in the summer of 1820. Edwin James, a young student who had just graduated from Middlebury College in Vermont, signed on as the relief botanist for the Long Expedition after the first botanist had died. The expedition explored the South Platte River up as far as present-day Denver, then turned south and passed close to what James called "Pike's highest peak." James and two other men left the expedition, camped on the plains, and climbed the peak in two days, encountering little difficulty. Along the way, he was the first to describe the blue columbine, Colorado's state flower. Gold was di scove red in the area of present-day Denver in 1858, and newspapers referred to the gold-mining area as "Pike's Peak." Pike's Peak or Bust became the slogan of the Colorado Gold Rush (see also Fifty-Niner). This was more due to Pikes Peak's visibility to gold seekers traveling west across the plains than any actual significant gold find anywhere near Pikes Peak. Major gold deposits were not discovered in the Pikes Peak area until the Cripple Creek Mining District was discovered southwest of Pikes Peak, and led in 1893 to one of the last major gold rushes in the lower forty-eight states. In July 1860, Clark, Gruber and Company commenced minting gold coins in Denver bearing the phrase "Pike's Peak Gold" and an artist's rendering of the peak (site unseen) on the obverse. In 1863 the U.S. Treasury purchased the minting equipment for $25,000 to open the Denver Mint. Julia and James Holmes traveled to the Rocky Mountains in Colorado in 1858, and reached the summit on August 5, with J. D. Miller and George Peck, making Julia Archibald Holmes the first woman to climb Pikes Peak. From the summit, she wrote in a letter to her mother: "Nearly everyone tried to discourage me from attempting it, but I believed that I should succeed; and now here I am, and I feel that I would not have missed this glorious sight for anything at all.” Thirty-five years later, in July 1893, Katharine Lee Bates wrote the song "America the Beautiful", after having admired the view from the top of Pikes Peak. It appeared in print in The Congregationalist, a weekly journal, on July 4, 1895. A plaque commemorating the words to the song was placed at the summit. On July 17, 1913 William Wayne Brown drove his car, the Bear Cat, twenty miles to the summit. The ascent took 5 hours and 28 minutes. The uppermost portion of Pikes Peak, above 14,000 feet (4,300 m) elevation, was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1961. Pikes Peak was the home of a ski resort from 1939 until 1984. There are several visitor centers on Pikes Peak, some with a gift shop and restaurant. These centers are located at the 6 mile , 12-mile (19 km) and the summit itself, and there are several ways to ascend the mountain. The Manitou and Pike's Peak Railway is a cog railroad operating from Manitou Springs to the summit year-round, conditions permitting. Automobiles can be driven to the summit via the Pikes Peak Highway, a 19 mi (31 km) road that starts a few miles up Ute Pass at Cascade. This road, which until October 2011 was unpaved after the halfway point, was made famous worldwide by the short film Climb Dance featuring Ari Vatanen racing his Peugeot automobile up the steep, twisty slopes as part of the annual Pikes Peak International Hill Climb race. The road has a series of switchbacks, treacherous at high speed, called "The W's" for their shape on the side of the mountain. The road is maintained by the city of Colorado Springs as a toll road. A project to pave the remainder of the road was completed on October 1, 2011. The project is in response to a suit by the Sierra Club over damage caused by the gravel and sediment that is constantly washed off the road into the alpine environment. The road remained open during construction. The most popular hiking route to the top is called Barr Trail, which approaches the summit from the east. The trailhead is just past the cog railway depot in Manitou Springs. Visitors can walk, hike, or bike the trail. Although the Barr Trail is rated only Class 1 it is a long and arduous hike with nearly 8,000 feet of elevation gain, and a 13 mile trip one-way. Runners race to the top and back on Barr Trail in the annual Pikes Peak Marathon. Another route begins at Crags Campground, approaching the summit from the west. At the peak, the partial pressure of oxygen is only about 60% of that at sea level, so a faster rate of respiration is required by those not regularly at high altitudes. Those familiar with altitude training know that prolonged exposure to the reduced pressures of high altitudes will produce more red blood cells to offset the lower oxygen availability. For the unacclimated, altitude sickness may develop in those who are sensitive or who over-exert themselves. Conditions at the top are typical of a high alpine environment. Snow is a possibility any time year-round, and thunderstorms are common in the summer. Since 1969, the summit of Pikes Peak has been the site of the United States Army Pike’s Peak Research Laboratory, a medical research laboratory for the assessment of the impact of high altitude on human physiological and medical parameters of military interest. Wuih ... Panjang banget kutipan dari wikipedia yang ditulis disini hehehe ... Ya ... Informasi sejarah mengenai tempat ini memang bisa didapatkan dari mana saja. Yang kutahu, selama aku naik kereta ini dan menuju ke Summit Pikes Peak, yang kulihat adalah daratan maha luas yang seolah tak ada habisnya. Saat kereta menaiki punggung pegunungan dan wisatawan bisa melihat keindahan alam yang tiada taranya ini, yang terdengar adalah suara penuh kekaguman dari para wisatawan. Pegunungan yang maha luas ini seolah memiliki warna yang tidak sama. Nampak warna hijau di kejauhan, warna hitam di tengah punggung bukit, warna biru telaga/danau, warna abu-abu pohon pinus, dan seterusnya. Dengan latar belakang langit berwarna biru terang dan awan putih yang berarak, lengkap sudah keindahan alam ciptaan Tuhan ini. O ya ... Kami juga berkesempatan melihat salju di salah satu bagian punggung pegunungan yang kami lewati. Salju ini sepertinya merupakan salju abadi. Mengingat suhu udara saat ini lumayan hangat (summer) yang ada dalam pikiran kami adalah salju akan meleleh karena panas. Namun yang terjadi tidak demikian. Salju tersebut seperti batu (keras) yang tidak mudah leleh begitu saja karena panas matahari. Lalu kami juga melihat bebatuan yang tersebar di mana-mana. Batu-batuan berukuran besar dan kecil berwarna kecoklatan dan merah mendominasi punggung pegunungan yang berdekatan dengan puncak pegunungan. Saat kereta berhenti di sebuah area karena berpapasan dengan kereta lain (rel gantian dipakai), kami melihat pemandangan luar biasa di depan kami. Ah ... Isi wisata kali ini adalah takjub, kagum, heran dan setengahnya nggak percaya melihat keindahan yang ada di sekitar kami. Saat kereta sampai di Summit Pikes Peak, kami diberi kesempatan untuk menikmati keindahan tempat wisata ini selama 20 menit. Ada toko penjual cindera mata dan makanan yang ada di area ini. Sebagai informasi, untuk bisa sampai ke tempat ini, selain naik kereta, wisatawan juga bisa naik jeep, naik motor, naik helikopter atau bahkan naik sepeda atau berjalan kaki. Ha? Memang beitulah kenyataanya ... Namun, jelas kami memilih naik kereta mengingat review perjalanan wisata dengan kereta disini sangatlah direkomendasikan hehehe ... O ya ... Tour leader kami mengatakan bahwa toko souvenir di sini menjual donat terenak sedunia. Sayangnya aku nggak sempat beli, karena antriannya puanjang buanget. Bayangkan, kami hanya diberi waktu 20 menit untuk ke toilet, belanja dan ambil gambar. Selain ambil gambar, baik ke toilet maupun belanja, kedua-duanya memiliki antrian yang panjang. Jelas saja kami, para wisatawan, harus memilih mana yang terpenting. Ke toilet, mau nggak mau kalo perlu kan harus mengantri hehehe ... Sesudahnya, jelas ambil gambar, karena waktu yang tersedia terbatas. Baru kalo ada sisa waktu, beli donat. Aku sebenarnya dah ikut ngantri beli donat selama 2 menit, sayangnya, antrian nggak maju-maju hahaha ... Akhirnya, batal deh mencicipi donat terlezat sedunia ... Sebagai gantinya, papa mendapatkan banyak sekali gambar cantik sejak dari berangkat, sampai dan pulang di acara wisata naik kereta kali ini yay ...
No comments:
Post a Comment