Drove up Pikes Peak - almost died lol

[james_gsx]

My friend from Texas is in town and we have been hitting a lot of mountain passes in our cars. Yesterday we decided to tackle Pikes Peak, plus it's a cool place to go. Well, I was running late leaving my house and he got lost trying to find the mall where we were planning on meeting up. By the time we got to Colorado Springs the clouds were rolling in and I knew it would probably rain, but I had no idea what I was going to drive into.

Heading up highway 24 to Pikes Peak highway was a blast, it's a very tight road and if you know how to "see the line" then you can go very fast. Of course, growing up around here I know how to drive these roads very well so my friend had to put forth some effort trying to keep up.

We got to Pikes Peak highway and hauled ass on the paved part, the occasional tourist was smart enough to pull over and let us pass except for one jerk from Kansas. He just got in our way and did 10-15, we had been doing 50-70

Once we got to the dirt part we slowed way down (obviously) and enjoyed the scenery. About halfway up (it turns to pavement for the tight hairpins then goes to dirt again) we drove through one of the clouds. We had very little visibility but it wasn't scary, just low visibility. We stopped a few times for photo ops and kept driving up to the top where we ate lunch and looked at the cool clouds we had just drove through.

On the way down was when it got really scary, it started raining hard and I thought no big deal. We got to the hairpins and it started hailing really hard. My car does not do well on ice at all, somehow my friends Corvette was fine but my Mercedes definitely was not. It was basically a "controlled" slide the whole way down for me. Nothing like the road covered in ice, tight hairpins with sheer drop-offs that lead to death, and my car having no traction. Of all the driving I do that was by the far the scariest one ever. I love to drive, if there was one thing I could do besides trading it would be to drive on a well designed road course.

Anyways, here are some pics. The shots of the hail is right after the bad part (I couldn't stop before and get out since it was hailing way too hard). Just imagine all that hail, except you couldn't see any road whatsoever and thats what we had just gone through. It was fun though, and I can't wait to go back up.

[cooter]

Gotta ask....what model and year Benz is that?

[james_gsx]

2004 C230

I almost got a 2004 C320 4matic, but it didn't handle nearly as well as the 230. The 230 is RWD and it's lighter, so that was the one for me. It only had 24k miles when I got it 3 months ago, now it has about 29 lol

[TinGull]

Dude, you're not really 19 years old are you? nice ride that is!

[Reaver]

Did you buy the car with your own money?

[james_gsx]

Yes, the loan is in my name, the title is in my name, and the insurance is all in my name.

[Reaver]

That's awesome dude

[rock]

reminds me of myself. when I was 19.
i had a nice car and ppl always assumed my parents bought it for me.