1,004 laps and counting: Woman building on Manitou Incline record

Seth Boster, The Gazette (Colorado Springs, Colo.)
·3 min read

Feb. 9—On a recent bluebird afternoon, Chasidey Geissler's friends and family were atop the Manitou Incline to celebrate a record-setting ascent.

It was Geissler's 1,004th climb up the mountain's vertical, brutal set of wooden ties in a calendar year — a new high mark by a woman. Geissler, 42, became the fifth person to record and be verified for 1,000 laps within 365 days. She follows Rachel Jones, who was recognized as the first woman to join the small club in December with 1,003 laps.

Geissler's record isn't finished. Her calendar year runs through the end of March. So since that 1,004th climb, she's been busy setting the women's bar even higher.

"Right now, the goal is to try to get to 1,200," she said.

For the most laps in a year, that would put her firmly in third only behind Greg Cummings (1,825) and Roger Austin (1,719).

The Incline's record keepers in July of 2022 recognized Geissler as the first woman to log 100 laps in a month, before her best 132 in November. A total 1,200 would mean an average of 100 laps a month for 12 months. "I thought it would be cool to round that out," Geissler said.

Which sounds crazy to her when she thinks about it. After climbing the Incline for the first time in 2013, "I told myself I would never do it again," she said.

But she needed a stress reliever by 2018, when a career change had her working through nursing school. It turned out nothing granted her relief like the Incline; she'd go up and down two or three times a week. She especially needed it after starting at UCHealth Memorial Hospital Central in 2020.

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"Right when COVID was taking off," Geissler said.

Her idea of nursing was helping people, saving them. But that year in the intensive care unit, "we had some extremely sick patients," Geissler said, "and it felt like no matter what we were able to do, they just weren't going to make it."

The losses weighed heavy the next year, too. And as punishing as the Incline was, "When my heart rate gets up, it helps me work through anxiety," Geissler said. "And sunlight is always the best medicine."

And there was something about the people on the Incline. "You can't go anywhere and see more alive people," Geissler said. "Everybody's breathing hard, trying to do something really hard."

Few try for 1,000 laps in a year. Geissler rearranged her schedule. She'd work part-time at the hospital, two 12-plus hour shifts a week, and the other days she'd be on the Incline.

Sometimes she'd listen to music. Sometimes she wouldn't, opting instead for the sound of her huffing and puffing, her footsteps and the breeze through the trees — a kind of "meditation," she said, far away from the beeps and alarms of the ICU.

She'd spend the morning and afternoon on four, five, six or more laps. She'd get done in time to pick up her two kids from school.

"On bad days, that's the best thing," Geissler said. "The first question they ask when I pick them up is, 'How many did you get? How did it go?' And the next thing they say is, 'That's amazing.'"

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