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Hi, this is your host, Bernie J of Bernie's Colorado Journeys, “Your Bridge to Adventure”. There are some names that when said you know there is importance attached; one of them is Colorado’s Pike’s Peak, Americas 14,115-ft mountain. In 1893, Katharine Lee Bates, an English teacher at Wellesley College in Massachusetts took a trip up Pikes Peak, starting the six hour ordeal in a horse-drawn carriage and switching to a burro halfway up the mountain she was inspired to pen the patriotic poem "America the Beautiful" which was first published in The Congregationalist newspaper on July 4, 1895. Moving forward in time, Fred Barr and his father, starting in 1914, undertook the improvement of a sightseeing trail up the east face of Pikes Peak. In 1922, Barr Camp was constructed about halfway up the trail. This rest stop offers weary hikers an overnight stay. Now lets fast-forward to the 21st century and find out about the Mountains current popularity; between the Pikes Peak Highway and the Broadmoor Pikes Peak Cog Railway, the 2015 visitation was ~415,000 folks and per the website “barrcamp.com”; over 25,000 hikers visit Barr camp annually with 2,500 as overnight guests. In this show we’ll peak behind the curtain (apologies to the Wizard of Oz) of what goes on to support the Barr trail hikers. But really this is the story of two former caretakers that did a life style that for the rest us, we might hardly ever consider, living on Pikes Peak year-round, read winter.
