Pikes Peak Kicks Off Today. Toughest Job I've Ever Done.
/An event like no other that I have ever attended kicked off on Tuesday morning with the first day of testing & qualifying. Though I am not there this year, I am certainly going to be following as much as I can.
When I tell you it is unlike an event I have ever attended, that’s not a stretch at all. There are a lot of people who have heard of Pikes Peak, and maybe seen photos or video from the event, but to be there is a completely different story. The cars, the altitude, the schedule, and the views…it’s like nothing I’ve ever experienced.
What makes racing in the clouds so amazing though? Well, it’s a different beast from every aspect imaginable. You all know how drag racing works, and the fact that we get to the track at about 8am each day and stay all day to test or qualify or race. Now imagine if you will, your race day being DONE by 9am. You didn’t read that wrong at all. During the week leading into the race, you are to be off the mountain at 9am each day.
Let me tell you about our schedule last year, but first, I have to explain how the week is laid out. If you didn’t know already, none of the cars run the entire mountain until race day. It is divided up into three sections, the lower, middle, and upper. Each day, starting on Tuesday, your team will be running one of the sections. Everyone qualifies on the same section, jsut on a different day. So on Tuesday you might be testing the upper section and then the lower on Wednesday. By Friday there is an optional test session, along with one of the biggest block parties I have ever witnessed.
The course is 12.42 miles and consists of 156 turns. Not only that, but your starting line altitude is 9390 feet. Yup, you are at almost 10,000 ft at the starting line and the finish line is 14,115 ft of altitude. Last year when we drove up to the finish line on Monday, the actual DA was in excess of 17,000 ft. Talk about not being able to breathe. I managed to walk a couple hundred feet before getting dizzy. Add to all of that the changing weather at different altitudes during your drive up the mountain. You can have drizzle and fog at the starting line, and snow at the top.
Last year for the 100th running of the event, I was lucky enough to be the team photographer for Don Wickstrum, The Fastest Pastor. My job was to capture the team, but when I wasn’t doing that I was free to roam around and capture other parts of the event. It was a week that I will never forget.
As a photographer, if you want a challenge, try your hand at Pikes. Each day I woke up at about 2am. We’d leave the Air BnB and hit the gas station for snakes and coffee. Then head over to where the car was garaged around the base of the mountain. By about 3am or so we were ready to head up to the mountain. Get in line and start your way up the mountain to the section that you were going to test at. By 6am the team was sending cars up the mountain for test passes and by 9am you were loaded up and headed back down the mountain to review data and make adjustments to the setup.
Once the team was done with their tuning, data review, adjustments, etc. it was lunch time and your day was pretty much done until it was time to go back up again. Which means, if you can’t sleep with the sun out, you’re in for a really rough week. Luckily I had no issues with that. By the end of the week your body is going to hate you.
Friday rolls around and at least for the team I was with there was no reason to test on Friday. We all headed to downtown Colorado Springs for Fanfest. If you are a race car nut, this is the place to be. A great atmosphere where they pack in over 30,000 people. The teams bring their car down to display for the fans, and you just walk around all night talking to drivers and looking at amazing machines.
I could go on and on about the experiences I had at the mountain, but I think you get the idea. That said, this is always an event worth watching and following. Following THIS LINK and it will give you all the information on how to watch or listen to what’s happening on the mountain. If you want to get even more in depth on everything that is the Pikes Peak Hill Climb, you can go to PPIHC and look at everything related to the event. Once again, tickets for the race sold out.