How many steps is the Manitou Incline?
2,768 steps, gaining 2,000 feet of elevation in under a mile. That is the figure published by the City of Colorado Springs, which manages the trail. You need a free reservation and a signed waiver to climb it, and you are expected to come down the Barr Trail instead, about four miles the long way round.
It was never built as a staircase
The Incline is the bed of a cable railway that hauled pipe up Pikes Peak and later hauled tourists. A rock slide wrecked the track in 1990 and the rails came out. The wooden crossties stayed, and a mile of railway sleepers spaced for a train turned into the steepest popular staircase in the United States by accident.
It averages a 45% grade and hits 68% near the top, which is why the last third has a reputation the first two thirds do not deserve.
Why 2,744 is still circulating
Because ties rot, wash out and get replaced. Sections of the trail have been rebuilt repeatedly since the city took over maintenance, and each rebuild changes the count by a few dozen. 2,744 was accurate once. 2,768 is what the city publishes now, and anything you read with no date attached is a snapshot of a staircase that has since moved.
Hikers hit the same problem in reverse. The trail is marked with painted step numbers, and they do not match either count, because they were painted in a different year again.
What your iPhone records
About 200 flights, and it will take you well under an hour to get them. 2,000 feet of ascent divided by the ten feet Apple Health calls a flight is 200 exactly, and this is one of the rare climbs where the phone undersells nothing. Most people who see a three-figure flight count in Health that day have been in a lift.
For scale, that is the Empire State Building observatory climb roughly twice over, on loose railway ties, starting at 6,500 feet where the air is already thin.
What 2,768 steps equals
Each one links to where the number came from.