The Manitou Incline

 

I have to be honest and say, I just don’t understand people getting tattoos of the Incline.  But then, I don’t get most of the tats people get nowadays. Back in my time, I’m old, tattoos were mostly gotten by Military men and they had significant meaning, like being in a battle tested unit or a personal achievement like being a parachutist. 

I know times have changed and people have too and it’s not my place to judge anyone’s values, unless of course they were going to marry my daughter!

After further reflection, I came to realize that the Incline draws an endlessly diverse range of people, all of them converging on this hill from a different point in their lives. Each with their own reason for challenging the mountain and each will have their own poignant moment when they reach the top. Some will quietly cherish the accomplishment, some will now have some more bragging rights, and some will have little stairways inked onto their skin. 

Sorry about the tat meme again, I can’t help it. Seriously I do not mean to belittle anyone, I read all sorts of reasons why folks are here, from heartbreaks to celebrations, to injury rehab, to battling cancer or addiction and every other debilitating disorder. 

If you came in celebration, I wish you a lifetime of happiness, if you are battling demons’ I wish you strength, you’ve already got that if you’ve climbed 2768. If you came searching for something, I hope what you find will give your life direction. 

If you’re one of the health nuts that do the incline on a regular schedule, or a group of guys or gals who think it will be great fun, or a family trying to do something together, good on all of you. It’s great to do something that is a challenge. 

My story, the incline came to my attention on a FB feed, probably because I travel to New Mexico each summer. With no team required it was it my kind of personal challenge. I told myself I have to do that and in 2023 I made my pilgrimage to the top. I was 74 years old at the time. Spurred on by my success I started training for a bike rally, I needed to be able to do 35 miles in 3 hours (on gravel trail) to qualify. That’s when I found out I have very little Cartlidge in one of my knees. 

At the turn of the calendar to 2025 I was now approaching 76 and I have been doing ok with my worn knee. I use a compression brace whenever I do most physical activity. I have been going to the gym regularly and started thinking, I want to do the incline again. While staying in the northern New Mexico mountains I started hiking to acclimate my one foot above sea level lungs to my present 8000 foot environs. 

There’s a little back story here, Here in New Mexico when I look out my window I see a fairly good sized mountain and I’ve long wondered what it looked like on the top. So, this one morning I chose a hiking path that passed the base of the mountain. So, I’m walking along checking out possible portages up the mountain. Suddenly I stopped. There it was, my path up the mountain. It was mostly 45 degrees up a dirt and loose rock incline for about 800 feet. Then there was the vertical rock cliff at the top 200 feet, I didn’t have a plan for that yet but I figured I’d find my way once I got up there. 

I made it to the top, found what I estimated was the high point, stood on a rock and took a picture of my feet. Like the Manitou incline the return was longer and much more complex than the accent. I actually enjoyed the challenge, my wife not so much. She had called me because I had been gone so long and wanted to know if I needed rescuing. 

My success on Bear Mountain (local name) rekindled my need to reclimb the Manitou incline. I don’t really know why, I met the challenge on the first climb, maybe after my knee problems I just wanted to prove I could do it again. Maybe I’m just trying to deny that I am aging and will never have all the adventures I dreamt about in my youth. 

June 10 2025 at about 7 am I was once again standing at step number one of the Manitou incline. Two years older now but even at 76 I thought I was in better physical shape than in 2023. I knew it was going to be a long slow accent for me. I paced myself, took occasional breaks, stayed hydrated and in about two and a half hours I once again felt the joy of stepping on 2768. (There are 2768 steps on the incline)

Unlike my first trip when I was in pain during the descent, I enjoyed all three miles of the Barr trail . My knee’s held up well, my thigh muscles didn’t complain as much as they did on the last time. The mountain scenery is majestic, it was a good day!

I don’t think I’ll be back, but who knows. I’m looking at some interesting Rail Trails I would like to try, so that’s next on my adventure list. First, I need to find a good Tattoo artist! lol

Tommy L. Waggoner

 

L-R Tommy Waggoner, Larry Midash, James "Spanky" Devine

This is a post I wrote in anticipation of my visit to a friends grave. We were almost to Lafayette Indiana when Millie and I came down with Covid. We had to canceled our visitation for now but I still plan on visiting someday.

Fifty odd years ago Tommy Waggoner and I spent our days hanging out the open doors of a Huey gunship. Up front we had a really capable aircraft commander, James “Spanky” Devine and a rotating series of co-pilots. During flight Tommy and I were doorgunners, we used infantry M-60 machine guns, they were hand held so we could shoot over or under the Armament pods on the sides of the helicopter, the pods held the rotating barreled machine guns and the tubes that held the aerial rockets with their high explosive warheads. On the ground Tommy was the Crewchief and was responsible for maintaining the aircraft, I was the aircraft armament repairman and took care of all the weapons systems on the aircraft. In reality we were a team and helped each other, often working late into the night and neither quitting until we were both done.

We fought together, we worked on our aircraft together, we drank together when our day was done and we rolled out of our bunks too early in the morning to do it all over again.

Doing it all over again was dedicated air support for the MACV-SOG launch site at Quan Loi in Vietnam. SOG was an acronym for Studies and Observations Group or Special Operations group depending on who was asking. 

Our launch site mostly covered the southern terminus of the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Cambodia. Cambodia was officially neutral in regards to the war and we weren’t supposed to be there, but neither were North Vietnamese. This made for some rather exciting times.

Our mission was inserting teams of basically mercenaries (lead by two army special forces men) into the Jungle’s of Cambodia. We then stood by for “if” and more often “when” they were discovered by the enemy. We would then scramble our aircraft and get them out. This was often easier said than done. 

This never crossed my mind when I was young and immortal but every time we scrambled for an extraction, we were going in shooting and there was a force on the ground that would be shooting back. No wonder we were such a tight knit group, well that, and we aviators lived in the compound with the SOG people, flew camouflaged helicopters, carried whatever personal weapons we wanted, and had very little Army supervision. (Our aviation company with all the NCO’s and officers was located on a different airfield) This is the world that Tommy and I lived in.

When our tour of duty was over, I was sent to Hunter Army Airfield in Savannah Georgia, I became the Sargent in charge of the ground crew on an aerial gunnery range. It was part of a school to teach helicopter pilots how to fly and fire the weapons systems on the new Huey Cobra gunships. Tommy was sent to Fort Rucker in Alabama where he served out his military service as a helicopter mechanic.

Tommy, along with Pete “Tex” Dworazcyk and Steve Stroman, two of our friends from Vietnam drove up to Savannah and spent a weekend with me once. We all had a great time reminiscing, drinking and promising to stay in touch after our time in service was over. We didn’t, we all went our separate ways, I don’t know what happened, maybe we needed to forget, maybe we just went on with the business of chasing the American dream. I think if they had the internet back then things might have been different, maybe not.

I did try to find Tommy and Tex and Steve in the early days of the internet, but was unsuccessful. It wasn’t until about ten years ago that I found out Tommy was gone. He died of cancer in 2001, he was only 48 years old.

I have wanted to visit his grave for a long time, I’m not sure why, I guess we went through so much together in war that I need to make this visit to his grave, to thank him for everything we did together, for being my friend and to say goodbye.