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Sierra Peak Section
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I had never heard of this before, but apparently there are people out there who climb 247 peaks in the Sierras, in a row. It's hard to find much information about this, but apparently Nathan Longhurst and Travis Soares just did this in 118 days. Travis's post about the final day is here, and after completion they posted here. This seems like a huge accomplishment, averaging more than two peaks per day over almost four months! How have I not heard of this before? Where's the climbing.com article, the nytimes article, and the feature film? It seems like the "rules" allow one to use a car to drive between trailheads, but other than that it's all human-powered. Does anyone have more information? |
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Avid peakbagger here ... The SPS list is a subjective list of "worthy peaks" put together by an arm of the Sierra club. Many peakbaggers strive to complete the list over their lifetime. The in a row aspect usually isn't really a thing. I'm not much of a list-person myself, but when I moved to CA ~20 years ago, the SPS list was a nice default starting point to pick interesting peaks that took me hiking to different spots across the Sierra Nevada range. Nathan and Travis became the first two folks to complete the list in a season. It is a pretty mega accomplishment for sure as one has to stay motivated, uninjured, and get a little bit of luck from weather and fires. I really enjoyed following their progress and reading their trip reports this season. If nothing else, they provided a steady stream of condition reports throughout the entire season. They each put in some absolutely mega-linkup days ... I suspect travis's current "time" will stand for quite some time for the reasons listed above. They appear on a couple of podcasts if you are interested in hearing more: (the first one is with Nathan and Travis, mid effort. I haven't listen to the second one yet.) |
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Year ago ,I went to the summit of Tehipite with a Southern California Sierra Club peak bagging group .Most of them had only done lower fifth class a few times but one had ascended the Lost Arrow. Several had completed the whole peak list and had been to some areas that are seldom visited otherwise. Their leader was vey capable and it was a mellow trip. |
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Yeah, what Nathan and Travis did this year is impressive. The list has been done multiple times (Doug Mantle is on his seventh(?) repeat), and done as dayhikes (by Matthew Holliman, Bob Burd, and JD Morris), but doing it in a season takes a lot of skill, persistence, and fitness, and a fair helping of luck. These guys also get style points, e.g. Nathan skied a bunch of the peaks, and soloed some serious stuff like the SE face of Clyde Minaret. There's certainly room for their times to be improved upon, but I don't know of anyone with the skill who is willing to devote an entire season to the project. But it's not the kind of thing that attracts sponsors or general-interest media. |
