He often goes unseen, but for that little ball of light spotted from a distance, a headlamp high on the darkened mountain. It’s often past midnight, the cold hours between one workday and the next. His family is fast asleep at home — or maybe the wife and kids wake to think of him out there.

Up and down 53-year-old Rami Alhamra goes on the Manitou Incline.

His is a subjectively crazy mission on an objectively brutal trail, that vertical set of wooden steps gaining more than 2,000 feet in less than a mile.

No one seems to doubt Alhamra will become the fourth man to record 1,000 Incline laps in a calendar year; he is believed to be the fastest ever to log 500 in just 82 days. Recent Strava data continue to show between six and seven climbs a day, sometimes as many as 10.

The question among fellow regulars: Could he beat the all-time mark of 1,825?

The Incline society, this religious band daily called to the test, regards Alhamra as a private, humble man. He has made his goal of 1,000 known, and the expectation is for that mark to be crossed this spring, with still potentially five or six months left in his calendar year after that.

In an interview, he says only that 1,000 is the goal. “It’s not about a record,” he says.

What is it about? What is it driving such a punishing pursuit? What is it about this recent trend of record-setting on the ever-enigmatic Incline?

The start of 2022 saw a third person notch 1,000 climbs in a year, following the most set in 2020. According to a record sheet maintained by Incline lifers and advocates, the past year added six to the 500 club, the most counted in a year. Also in 2021, eight people joined 10 others to ever report an “Inclinathon.” That’s 13 ascents in 24 hours, equivalent to 1 1/2 times the elevation gain on Everest.

“I’ve noticed it’s gone kinda crazy lately,” says 67-year-old Fred Baxter, a daily Incliner since 1996. “It was nothing for a long time. Then all of a sudden, everybody’s doing it.”

Obsession has hovered over the former funicular railway ever since the tourist rides ended. In the ‘90s, Baxter was among a small, cultish group of avid Pikes Peak runners who took root on the then-privately owned abandoned ties, trespassing to realize an ideal training ground. It was mostly about speed then, Baxter recalls. Muscle-building.

The ensuing years saw public formality and promotion of the Incline; it is popularly regarded now as the region’s most popular trail. That’s come along with the boom of apps that track more than speed, like Strava, and websites committed to obscure records across the outdoors. Websites like fastestknowntime.com, the de facto clearinghouse for those records, aka “FKTs” — everything from fastest known times for little-to-no-sleep thru-hikes to mad dashes linking remote summits.

The recent Incline loads are “kind of a different character than most FKTs,” says Peter Bakwin, a Boulder-based runner and co-founder of the site. “Because first of all, you have to not get hurt. So there’s a certain methodical-ness required. And then just the stick-to-ativeness for five or six or more times a day for a year?

“I mean, for what? You know? Like, what are they getting out of it?”

‘You’re gonna get addicted to this’

Exercise, many say. A daily challenge and sense of accomplishment. A strange peace.

Katharine Partridge’s 500-climb foray came as she was coping with the loss of a long-held job. Her 56 laps last October have been listed as the most by a woman in a month, and her 13 in a single day marked another record.

“Being displaced, that’s sort of a confidence-crushing thing to happen after I was with my company for 32 years,” she says. “The Incline was a way for me to gain my confidence back.”

For as long as the Incline has inspired “doubles” and “triples” and laps beyond, it has inspired stories of recovery from emotional trauma, sickness and addiction. When he started hiking it in 2014, Troy Dunavin was emerging from a divorce and dive into alcohol. He ended up moving to a place close to the trailhead.

“I credit the Incline for saving my life,” Dunavin says.

He’s lived in Santa Fe, N.M., the past seven months. “It’s ghostly in a way,” Dunavin says of the Incline. “There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think about it. At least a dozen times a day.”

He thinks about the burn, yes, but also the views and the smell of pine and timber steps after the rain. Incline regulars talk about a certain camaraderie, and Dunavin is one of those; he thinks about the people, the same faces every day contorted in that odd mix of pain and pleasure.

Jill Suarez is among those people. She’s been called the Incline Queen, another regular who goes back to the ‘90s and similarly moved as close as she could to the Incline. Her home is next to the base.

“You’re gonna get addicted to this,” she told Dunavin early on.

“I didn’t know what she was talking about, but you do,” he says. “It’s a really hard-core addiction. It’s a punishment at first, but then it gets to a point where you don’t view it so much as a punishment. It’s just something you need.”

Suarez knows all too well. She says she can’t imagine life without the Incline. But she’s also seen the harm it can do.

She’s seen regulars get knees and hips replaced. She’s seen others’ limps worsen over time. She was once in a relationship that she says turned “unhealthy” — partly due to the man’s fierce commitment to the Incline, she says.

Suarez has no interest in records. “I like to see people doing it,” she says, “but I don’t think anybody should feel any pressure to perform like that.”

Costs of glory

Dr. Andrew Subudhi has felt that pressure before. He’s chair of the Human Physiology and Nutrition Department at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs and, by his own joking description, is “a recovering addict” of ultra running.

Subudhi chased the endorphin high while racing in some of the world’s most vaunted contests. That was 20 or so years ago. Now he works with athletes to enhance performance.

In some, Subudhi has seen a “snowball effect,” as he calls it. “My perspective is, you get involved with a group of people, they’re your friends and family, and your whole life revolves around these types of events. And it breeds itself.”

For him, stepping away “was about doing something that was more sustainable long term,” he says.

“Unfortunately, a lot of these things are not healthy,” Subudhi says, noting, for example, cascading effects from lack of sleep and a weakened immune system. “From a physiological standpoint, you start looking at some of the negative effects of these things. It might seem like, ‘Wow, you’re super fit.’ But what are the costs associated with it?”

For Greg Cummings, 64, the costs were magnified by Type 1 diabetes. What made his record 1,825 Incline ascents between 2019 and 2020 all the more stunning was his battle with a disease that, throughout his life, relegated him to the emergency room more times than he can remember.

While averaging five climbs a day for 365 days through harsh heat, unrelenting rain and bitter snow, Cummings walked a tightrope: Through exhaustion, he constantly monitored his blood glucose levels, using insulin and carbohydrates to maintain levels, or else risk bodily shutdown.

Once atop the Incline, he shivered and blacked out; a stranger who happened to be a registered nurse saved him. Another time he passed out in his car and another stranger smashed his back windshield to get to him. Back home, his wife talked about leaving.

Two years later, Cummings sounds conflicted when he reflects on the sufferfest.

He wanted to inspire other people living with disease. He wanted to raise funds for kids with cancer. He did those things, while also breaking his previous Incline record believed to net him more vertical feet in a year than anyone anywhere ever (higher than the International Space Station).

“There’s some pride,” Cummings says, “but there’s an enormous cost involved. And sometimes, I don’t know if there is real wisdom in doing something that is that costly.”

Pain and gain

The stranger who happened to be a nurse atop the Incline that day was Christel Aime. He was in the middle of tallying 500 climbs on the year. He followed up with 1,000 between 2021-22, joining Cummings and Roger Austin in that exclusive club.

At a coffee shop the other day, someone recognized Aime. “You’re crazy!” she remarked.

Maybe, Aime admits. He admits he felt like he was going crazy during the 1,000 laps.

“I was having dreams about floating on the Incline. My daughter looked it up. She said, ‘You are fearful of the Incline.’”

But Aime kept going back. The self-made businessman finds value in overachieving. Aime believes a year of life should be spent setting lofty goals and going for them — as he hopes for his two young kids, who celebrate their birthdays on the Incline.

What’s more, Aime says, the Incline has given him the time and focus to conceive of what have been successful new enterprises. He’s not about to stop climbing, he says. “I’m just playing in my head with a number, if 2,000 is in reality.”

On the Incline and all around Colorado’s mountains, the bar keeps rising. Throughout the pandemic, new records on fastestknowntime.com have risen and fallen at rates like never before, Bakwin says. He credits that to work-from-home schedules and athletes devising their own competitions in the absence of canceled races.

Races are mostly back. But Subudhi doesn’t see bar-raising trends stopping.

“I can be in awe from an accomplishment standpoint,” he says. “But I do worry about those being inspired to take it to the next level. Because at some point, it can be dangerous.”

Despite his record pace, Alhamra says the next level does not interest him.

“I don’t want to do the Incline for the record,” he insists. “I want to do the Incline when I feel like I want to do the Incline.”

Which has been a lot lately. The everlasting question: Why?

It’s hard for Alhamra to explain.

“There is a little something about this Incline that nobody can figure out, including myself,” he says.

He talks about the exercise. The daily challenge and sense of accomplishment. The friendships and camaraderie, those familiar faces contorted in that odd mix of pain and pleasure. That strange peace.

At night, “it’s nice and quiet,” Alhamra says.

But always, he must return home.

“You know, there’s the house duties,” he says. “My yard looks like a mess.”