Colorado Woman Becomes 1st To Climb Manitou Incline 1,000 Times … While Pregnant
By Shawn Patrick on January 11, 2023
A woman in Colorado is showing she can do something only men have done before, and then some. Rachel Jones has always enjoyed an active lifestyle, including climbing the Manitou Incline for the last 11 years. It’s a popular hiking trail near Colorado Springs that’s 2,744 steps and climbs more than 2-thousand feet of elevation in less than a mile. And she recently became the first woman to do it more than a thousand times in a year.
Jones says she was looking for a challenge she didn’t know if she could do, so she set her sights on joining the 1000 club, the exclusive group who have done the climb a thousand times in 365 days. The incline is notorious for being one of the hardest climbs in North America, so it’s no easy feat. And not only is she the first woman to do it, she’s done it while pregnant. For 440 of the times she hiked the incline, she was hiking for two.
Since Jones has been doing this high-intensity cardio for years, her doctor approved of her continuing to climb while pregnant. She’s now just 54 climbs away from having hiked the incline 500 times while expecting, and her baby isn’t due until May, so she’s going to reach that milestone. Jones explains, “The largest amount of pride I have for this is being able to finish this challenge in such a womanly way of being pregnant.”
