With both feet planted firmly so as not to slip and tumble down into the clouds, Hugo Benitez glanced over his shoulder, down to the shrouded ties and water-diverting structures that he and his team installed during two previous jobs on the Manitou Incline.
“We never thought we would be here,” he said atop the region’s most popular trail. “We never thought down there that we’d be up here.”
The task loomed above the false summit they saw from their lower stations in 2014 and 2016. Now they’re above that hump, here at the highest reaches of the famous stair-stepper where hikers have always navigated loose soil on eroded slopes and broken ties around cracked culverts.
The smell of mixed dirt hung thick on the thin air as eight men in hard hats worked through another cold, drizzly day. “Brutal” was the word one used to describe the conditions they’ve been dealt recently as they try to finish the third and final phase of scheduled renovations on the former cog railway.
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