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Originally Posted by LibertySnake
2. Heights. Any fellow Acrophobia sufferers that have braved the rails? ...
... but with wooden bridges and 37% grade, my Acrophobia is sure to be heightened (no pun intended). Is it that bad?
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I don't like heights much, get me above 8 feet up on a ladder and I get the shakes. However, the Cog caused me no problems. While you are going up a steep hill and there are some bridges there are no (that I was aware of) areas where you are actually off the ground that much. The ground is just very steep. The view from the mountains on the way up and down is beautiful, if the weather cooperates. If it's cloudy the trip may not be worth it. That's the real gotcha. It's hard to get tickets at the last minute because the Cog is so popular but if you buy tickets in advance you might get lousy weather. We went in the spring, shortly after it opened for the season, so it was cold at the top but we got tickets at the last minute when we could be sure the weather was good.
We were on vacation a few years ago and went on the only other Cog railway in the United States, Pikes Peak. The same was true out there, the train is never high off the ground. However, while Mt Washington is a little over 6000 ft high, Pikes Peak reaches 14000 ft. I had minor altitude sickness (headache, nausea) after being on the peak for about 20 minutes. I was really glad to be going back down. You don't have that problem on Mt. Washington.