The first thing you should know about the Manitou Incline is that you canât just walk up and start climbing it. In its outlaw days, before the former utility-railroad-turned-tourist-attraction was legal to climb, devotees could do that. They arrived by the thousands from near and far.
But those freewheeling times led to trouble: The old railroad ties were deteriorating, the soil was eroding and people were getting injured, even dying.
The base is at 6,500 feet and the summit is at 8,590 feet, a gain of more than 2,000 feet in less than a mile. That takes a tremendous toll on bodies â even ones accustomed to strenuous activity at high altitude â and it can take hours for El Paso County Search and Rescue to reach hikers in distress.
In Colorado Springs we have already experienced our fair share of climate-change-driven natural disasters, from the devastating Waldo Canyon and Black Forest fires that destroyed nearly 1,000 homes and took four lives, to the historic 2013 flooding that followed shortly after.Â
The average temperatures in our community have been rising over the years and Colorado Springs Utilities is now predicting that 70 percent of all the cityâs residences will have air conditioning installed over the next few years. Colorado Springs is growing hotter faster than the rest of the state, and Colorado is often in the top 10 states showing the greatest temperature increases. Last summer, record-burning wildfires translated to terrible air quality, putting our health and well-being at risk. Â
With visitation to Pikes Peak region parks and trails expected to increase over the next several weeks, a group of six federal, state and local Colorado land managers remind visitors
Small subsets of the electrical grid, or microgrids, that can stand alone in an emergency and keep critical services or businesses going, could be integrated into the Colorado Springs Utilities
Sometimes, the arc of an entrepreneurâs startup concept dovetails unexpectedly with the headlines. Mike Crandall saw this happen to an extent during his Air Force service, but even more so with Digital Beachhead, the risk assessment and security company he founded in 2015.Â
In December 2020, commercial firms, government agencies and prime contractors were caught off-guard by the discovery of a cyber breach, allegedly perpetrated by the Russian hacker outfit CozyBear. The exceptionally complex supply chain attack saw the hackers insert malicious code into the commercial software application made by security monitoring developer SolarWinds, which created a backdoor into customersâ IT systems.Â