Pikes Peak Highway
Colorado
Gradient by colour: under 3% 3–6% 6–9% 9%+
Stats computed from OpenStreetMap and satellite elevation data — approximate.
Pikes Peak Highway is a 29.5 km cycling climb averaging 6.5% (+1957 m), rising from 2372 m to 4299 m in Colorado.
Spencer Penrose's 1915 tourist road, made famous by its auto hill climb and fully paved only in 2011, the year bike racing arrived: the Broadmoor Cycle to the Summit climbs 12.5 miles and 156 turns to 14,115 feet, and the road hosted the US Hill Climb Nationals in 2016. The donuts at the summit are the only ones made above 14,000 feet.
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Alan Stark from Goodyear, AZ, United States
Glenn Harper from Grapevine, Texas, US
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Where it bites
Steepest 500 m: 10.9% (km 21.6–22.1).
Road: paved throughout
What it’s like to ride
The pavement is smooth the whole way up, and the forested first half past Crystal Reservoir rolls by manageably enough that it's easy to be fooled: everything that matters happens after Glen Cove, where you cross treeline at around 11,500 feet, descending cars queue for a mandatory brake check, and you get one last chance at food and water. From there the road stacks 14 big hairpins up an exposed alpine face at 10 to 12 percent, easing to almost flat through Devil's Playground before the steepest pitches arrive in the final miles. The 6.5 percent average is a lie of arithmetic; at the top you're breathing air with about 42 percent less oxygen than at sea level, and the weather can flip from shirtsleeves to snow in a single afternoon. At 14,115 feet the rebuilt Summit Visitor Center has restrooms, water, a restaurant, and the famous donuts, the only ones made above 14,000 feet.
History
The Pikes Peak Highway is the work of Spencer Penrose, the Colorado Springs entrepreneur who in 1915 spent roughly $500,000 converting the 1888 carriage road into a motor road toward the 14,000-foot summit, largely to draw tourists to his Broadmoor hotel; to publicize it he launched the Pikes Peak Hill Climb auto race, first run in August 1916. The upper miles stayed gravel for decades, until a 1998 Sierra Club lawsuit over the roughly 1.5 million tons of gravel washed into mountain streams forced a paving program completed in October 2011, giving riders asphalt from gate to summit. Competitive cycling arrived just ahead of the final asphalt: the Assault on the Peak, first held in 2010 with more than 300 riders, grew into the USA Cycling-sanctioned Broadmoor Cycle to the Summit, a 12.5-mile, 156-turn race from Crystal Reservoir that gains over 4,700 feet, and in 2016 the road hosted the USA Cycling Hill Climb National Championships. Colorado Springs rider Leroy Popowski dominated the early editions and set the course record of 1:08:36 in 2015, a mark that stood until John Keller broke it in 2025.
Common questions
- How long and steep is Pikes Peak Highway?
- Pikes Peak Highway is a 29.5 km cycling climb averaging 6.5% (+1957 m), rising from 2372 m to 4299 m in Colorado.
- Where is Pikes Peak Highway steepest?
- The steepest 500 m averages 10.9%, between km 21.6 and km 22.1 of the climb.
- How many hairpins does Pikes Peak Highway have?
- Pikes Peak Highway has 21 hairpin bends, counted from the road's map geometry (a hairpin here means at least 150 degrees of turning completed within 150 metres of road). Painted corner numbers on some climbs count gentler bends too, so the two figures can differ.
- What is the road surface like on Pikes Peak Highway?
- Pikes Peak Highway is paved throughout.
29.5 km · +1957 m · 6.5% avg · ~10.9% max · 2372 → 4299 m · 21 hairpins