Colorado Springs man on pace to break Manitou Incline record
A Colorado Springs man has climbed the Manitou Incline more than 1,000 times this year, and he’s on pace to break the record.
62-year-old Greg Cummings has beat the record twice before. But now he has to climb the incline more than twice as many times to beat his friend Roger Austin’s current record of 1,719 times, set in 2015.
To put that into perspective, climbing the Incline 1,719 times means a little less than 5 climbs per day and climbing up 3,456,909 feet (not counting the climb back down). That’s 663 miles, or enough elevation to put you well into space.
We caught up with Cummings at the base of the incline on Wednesday. Turns out, he’s not just doing this for the bragging rights. Cummings is raising money for Camp Wapiyapi, a summer camp for children battling cancer. To donate, you can go to the camp’s website: http://www.campwapiyapi.org/.
This isn’t the first time Cummings has used his trek to the top to give back. Cummings has type 1 diabetes and, the last time he broke the record in 2014, he raised money to help find a cure. Cummings says the diabetes makes the hike much more difficult: “It’s so hard to do it with type 1 diabetes. It’s not an easy task by any means.” But, he keeps going. Cummings says the “Incline community” has had his back every step of the way: “They’ve been very supportive of what I’m doing.”
Cummings says he’s actually on pace to whiz right past the current record and finish off the year at 1,900 ascents to the top. His time is up on January 11th. Stay tuned and we’ll let you know if or when he becomes the new record holder.
