“M”veresting: Walking In the Snow Uphill Both Ways
I’m moving at the ever-present alternating cadence of my trekking poles softly whumpfing in the morning snow and my microspikes abruptly sticking into the frozen mountainside. A faint orange hue frames miles of city lights below, twinkling like fireflies like some bizarre cold-induced fever dream. Round the two traverses, up to the spike, enjoy the break from the wind in the treeline, and then summit. I brush some ice off my mustache, give my training partner a quiet and rather unfirm “good work” before immediately turning back down the mountain. We’ve already been climbing this mountain for seven straight hours, and I wasn’t
even halfway done.
What Is Everesting?
Everesting (N): An endurance feat where the athlete bikes or runs the vertical equivalent of Mt Everest (natively, Sagarmatha) from sea level. A single effort containing 29,032’ of climbing all earned by repeating laps on a single mountain or course.
Learning in The Field
There’s plenty I learn about myself on long endurance efforts, but what I really enjoy is the things these efforts teach me about the landscapes I interact with. Without sharing hours of laps on this mountain with my training partner, I wouldn’t have realized just how drastically our footsteps contribute to transforming a half-inch of fresh snow into a solidly frozen ice chute that I would l have to spend all day navigating. Even more interesting is how drinking a liter of coffee forced me to draw comparisons between Montana’s powdery, cold smoke snow as a tool for wiping and the East Coast snow I was accustomed to cleaning myself with (Note: cold smoke ranks lower than any other snow I’ve substituted for toilet paper).
All impromptu science experiments aside, it really was a good day all in all. The contrast between a quiet, clear night and the snowy, lively morning with other Bozemanites getting their morning work in was really nice. Every few hours it would either start snowing, stop snowing, change up wind speeds, or introduce a new friendly face to walk beside me as I inched ever-closer to my ultimate goal.
The guiding principle for this effort was to maintain a pace that I thought I could seemingly manage forever. Hours 10, 15, and 20 only had a total lap variance of 2-4 minutes which made me feel amazing as I’ve been working really hard this season to make my running / hiking more consistent. All in all the fight was more in my head than in my body. Around lap 29 of 35 my mind began begging me to take a long rest or deeply craving warmth and comfort— neither of these wishes were granted.
Calling Upon the Adventure Community
There was a lot for me to look to for inspiration. An international community of over 100 people had just come together to fund my Winter training for Antarctica, and I was not going to forfeit my first big Winter project in preparation and let them or myself down. Outside of my own trials, I was also acutely aware that my mentor, Wendy Searle, was waiting outside the airport in preparation for her South Pole speed record attempt AND my friend, Preet Chandi, was at the very same moment already sheltering in her tent in Antarctica as a blizzard was roaring through. I craved comfort because it was only a few miles away at my cabin, but she was hundreds of miles away from any sign of civilization and lacked the luxury of weakness, therefore I decided I would deny myself the same in solidarity.
At the end of 22 hours, 23 minutes, and 35 laps up and down the frozen mountainside I’d finished what I set out to do. The sun had risen and set again, so I took a few moments to breathe in the Northern Rocky Mountain air and appreciate the twinkling lights of Bozeman reflected by the immaculate starlight that came down from the heavens. The official Everesting society recognizes any effort under 100km as a steep Everest, and mine came in at just under 60km. That’s just silly.
Stats for Nerds:
-29,100 feet of climbing
-36 Miles
-22 hours, 23 minutes
-18 to 35 degrees Fahrenheit
Nutrition:
-8 scoops of Tailwind
-2.5 liters of coffee
-a box of apple turnovers
- 1 PB&J
-1 bag of chips
- 2 croissants
-1 slice of pizza
-1 Dr.Pepper