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Everesting – Climb the Equivalent of Mt. Everest
- iso1631 4y ago"EVERESTING IS THE MOST DIFFICULT CLIMBING CHALLENGE IN THE WORLD" Sure, unlike say climbing Everest for real, or dozens of other high mountains (including many more difficult than Everest)
- frou_dh 4y agoelevaet already beat you to the 'Well Acktually' by 2 hours
- tppiotrowski 4y agoHas anyone run the distance to the moon yet? Seems like the next step in the ultra progression these days... My girlfriend does about 300,000' of vertical gain a year which I think is the altitude that's considered the edge of space :)
- oefrha 4y agoIf you run a marathon every day, it “only” takes 25 years.
- markwillis82 4y agoThat will become the next “corporate team building”
- quickthrower2 4y ago2022: No more commutes but need to run 26 miles a day!
- wizofaus 4y agoOn a bike that's very doable though - if you wanted to do it 10 years you'd need to ride ~105k a day, which doesn't sound completely crazy.
- teruakohatu 4y agoThe moon is very far away! For every foot your girlfriend climbs, she would need to do 1km to get to the moon in a year... Although in space you wouldnt be fighting gravity.
- jayknight 4y agoTo get farther away from earth you have to work against gravity.
- iso1631 4y agoTechnically it's slightly lower surprisingly early in the trip -- get to an altitiude of 500km and g is down to about 8.5m/s, at 2000km it's 5.7, and by the time you get just 1/10th of the way it's pretty much gone. At some point the moon's gravity will start to work with you and pull you in.
- pg314 4y agoAccording to Wikipedia [1], Gordon Pirie ran 347,600 km in the 40 years to 1981. He lived another 10 years after that, so he might have come close. The distance to the moon is 384,400 km. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Pirie https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Pirie
- keiferski 4y agoRelated: Ross Edgley, who also swam around the entire island of Great Britain, rope climbed the height of Everest in just under 24 hours https://www.redbull.com/gb-en/ross-edgley-worlds-longest-rope-climb https://www.redbull.com/gb-en/ross-edgley-worlds-longest-rop... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Edgley https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Edgley
- cbfrench 4y agoFor a more authentic experience, you can breathe through a straw for the last 1k and put bags of ice on your hands and feet. ;)
- beckingz 4y agoCan partially confirm. I hiked to Everest Base Camp and the air at 5300 meters was significantly thinner. It's no surprise that at the top they use oxygen.
- elevaet 4y ago> EVERESTING IS THE MOST DIFFICULT CLIMBING CHALLENGE IN THE WORLD. That's quite a claim. I'd say "everesting +1m" is a slightly more difficult climbing challenge. Or, you know, actually climbing Everest..
- quickthrower2 4y agoNo sleep is allowed too
- inopinatus 4y agoPedantic nitpicking aside, George Mallory (who has done both, and is essentially the godfather of this cycling challenge) was reported as saying the bike ride was harder¹. Alas, I have so far only completed one of the two, so I cannot compare for myself. However, for those especially keen, the Hells 500 group also recognises a separate 10,000m “high rouleurs” challenge, albeit with more relaxed rules about route and (optionally) sleep. [1] https://cyclingtips.com/2012/05/mt-everest-in-a-day/ https://cyclingtips.com/2012/05/mt-everest-in-a-day/
- wizofaus 4y agoI find that hard to believe. Nobody's died riding up Donna Buang on a bike and back 10 times.
- inopinatus 4y agoI’d be careful to distinguish between difficult and dangerous.
- wizofaus 4y agoPerhaps but it's the extremity of the conditions and the stresses they put on your body that makes it dangerous and I would think a good deal more difficult than climbing a 2000m peak in a temperate climate.
- avgcorrection 4y ago
- yread 4y agoI trained for one hike by going up (and down) the stairs to the 13th floor in our apartment building 10 times with 25kg backpack every day for a few days. That's like 500m of gain. Just 18 times this and I would be on top of Everest
- nostromo 4y ago13th floor * 10 times * 18 repetitions… Yes, just a simple climb up 2340 stories and you’ll have climbed an Everest equivalent. By the way, you’d still be quite a bit short if your building’s stories were a more average 3m tall.
- systemvoltage 4y agoPeople don’t summit Everest in one go from 0m -> 8848m though… in a “single activity”. I don’t know how far up the Everest base camp is but it’s not on sea level. In the limit, if the height of Everest goes to infinity and the base camp is say 2000m below the summit; Everesting would become impossibly challenging.
- irrational 4y agoWe have an extremely steep hill near us that is about 800 meters in height. It would suck big time to try climbing it 11 times in one day.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- 83457 4y agoThere is a ski resort nearby called Wintergreen and a cycling time trial up the road to the top every year. I was not aware of it until I got into cycling for a bit about 10 years ago. The road averages 7.7% grade and has switchbacks that are 15% with total elevation gain of 2900 feet. https://pjammcycling.com/climb/622.Wintergreen%2520Drive https://pjammcycling.com/climb/622.Wintergreen%2520Drive That could be a good hill for this if cycling at a high enough level. Would be best to have a vehicle bring you down each time. I did the time trial and had to walk up portions. Surprisingly I sprinted at the end when my nephew ran with me up the final climb to the finish. I doubt I'll ever get to that level of endurance again.
- toss1 4y ago>>Would be best to have a vehicle bring you down each time. Indeed! Except under "Single Climb" in the rules, it is forbidden >>– Each repeat must be ridden up and down (i.e. you can’t get driven down each time). You also need to keep your device recording the whole time. For the Mt Washington hillclimb race, unless you have disk brakes, it is required to descend in a car because your brakes or tire will not survive the descent and you'll go off the edge... This is getting intriguing...
- 83457 4y agoWintergreen Ascent TT disallows cyclists going down at all. I've been down some mountains going faster than I should have, but Wintergreen is one where if you make a minor mistake you could easily end up in mortal danger (at least that was my fear at my level at the time). Also, the road isn't closed to traffic during the event which makes downhill even harder during that time. I don't think a reasonably high level cyclist would have a problem going up and down a few times in a day though, which could of course be done at any other chosen day of the year.
- inopinatus 4y agoI still have the email that Andy van Bergen wrote to the Hells 500 group in 2013, suggesting that we turn George Mallory’s notoriously epic training regime into a permanent cycling challenge. I was up for the bike ride but quietly skeptical that it would become a lasting phenomenon. In Andy’s words: > “This epic is tough - but it will form the springboard for a new wave of endurance riding around the globe.” Still, as part of the launch of Everesting as a standing challenge, I cleared six solo, unsupported repeats of Australia’s Mt Hotham in February 2014. Then I slept for a week. Fast forward to today, and it’s evident that I was wrong and Andy was right. There are nearly twenty-three thousand Everestings documented in the official hall of fame, and no doubt more unrecognised besides. I guess it’s a combination of being just-about-achievable, with constraints that help focus the effort without compromising the difficulty, plus the enjoyable imagery associated with the branding. Will I do it again? Probably not, but if you’re interested, then let it be known that no great athletic gifts are required, and with adequate preparation and mindset a very average cyclist (such as myself) can pull it off.
- wizofaus 4y agoNo "very average" cyclist can complete even one ascent of Mt Hotham, let alone 6. Even whoever has last place on the Strava segment for any HC climb is well above the "average" cyclist, who will get off and walk for any gradient over about 7 or 8% (let alone The Meg, an infamous pinch early in the climb that reaches something like 17%).
- thejackgoode 4y agoPhil Gaimon, a retired professional cyclist, has a nice channel where he covers the topic first hand, so to say https://youtube.com/watch?v=o8vUv4uzfxI https://youtube.com/watch?v=o8vUv4uzfxI
- fiftyacorn 4y agoId be interested in the best strategy? Id think a 5-6% gradient of 3-5 miles to allow a balance of effort vs recovery? Would be interesting to see what the top riders are doing
- cranekam 4y agoMost competitive Everesting attempts use a steep and typically short road. 3-5 miles of downhill on a 5-6% gradient is probably too time consuming (i.e. too much time spent not ascending). Ronan McLaughlin, the current mens' Everesting record holder, used a 12%, 800m long segment: https://www.strava.com/segments/876936 https://www.strava.com/segments/876936 IIRC from a video I saw about it the prevailing wind is up the valley, so he got a bit of a tailwind on the ups but the headwind on a 12% descent didn't matter. https://cyclingtips.com/2021/03/ronan-mc-laughlin-has-smashed-the-everesting-record-in-6-hours-40-minutes/ https://cyclingtips.com/2021/03/ronan-mc-laughlin-has-smashe...
- wizofaus 4y ago5% is way too low. 9 or 10% is about the sweet spot I'd say. But you need a road you can descend on with minimal effort too.
- matsemann 4y agoYou are then trading wattage for time. And given it's already a veeery long challenge counted in hours, it may not be worth it to make it even longer.
- zython 4y agoThe steeper the better, so you dont waste time coasting or softpedaling or lose velocity to air losses. Steepness is also good for the descent, getting you up to a good (terminal) velocity. It also helps if the segment is straight such that you dont need to corner. IIRC the ones who were competing for the record didnt make the effort/recovery trade off consideration, their limiter was the segment. I dont think they've found a longer perfect segment yet apart from the one in GB. But from what I#ve seen the optimal ratio was 3-4/1 asc./desc.
- ramkumarsarraf 4y ago[flagged]
- wizofaus 4y agoWow, didn't expect to see this appear here! I can't claim to be an early achiever, but I do know A.v.B and some of the people that did the original attempts, still remember being blown away by it when I saw the Strava uploads.
- terry_torso 4y ago
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- matsemann 4y agoI have a soft spot for these kind of "meaningless" challenges. Personally I'm now trying to figure out how to ride a 100K, but using the least amount of road to do it. So basically riding 3-4 hours in a roundabout is the best. Challenge is finding something with the appropriate radius. Too small and it's hard to keep up the speed. Another one I'm doing is using wandrer.earth to track the amount of unique roads I've traveled (so opposite of 100k challenge). Trying to cover every street in my city.
- pythko 4y agoSome college guys I know rode 200 miles around essentially a big roundabout (the loop length was probably less than 300 meters) at 20mph. When asked why they did it, they basically just shrugged and said they thought it would be a cool challenge. And I guess it was.
- michaelt 4y ago> Personally I'm now trying to figure out how to ride a 100K, but using the least amount of road to do it. Maybe you could join this guy: https://www.cyclingweekly.com/news/cyclist-rides-100-miles-around-regents-park-inner-circle-at-4am https://www.cyclingweekly.com/news/cyclist-rides-100-miles-a...
- popotamonga 4y agoFunny i have no problem doing a 100k, but i tried what you mentioned, i found a nice 1K loop but at 25km i couldn't handle it mentally anymore and never got do it it despite multiple tries.
- keiferski 4y agoI have a 1K loop near me and I had the same idea. The most I've done is about 20KM before the boredom became too much. I'm starting to think that dealing with the monotony may be the challenge itself.
- matsemann 4y agoI did try with a ~145m loop here, but it was hard to keep up the speed. Turns so tight I couldn't do them much faster than ~27km/h, and then I would be stuck there all night. So did 100 laps out of ~700 before I caved in haha. Found another one here that's ~700m, but it's actually quite hilly and had bad luck with the wind being against me going up the hill, so caved in after 33 rounds. Will try this round again with a faster bike and better weather, though ideally I'd like a shorter and flatter one. But yeah, combating the boredom is somehow the alluring part for me. Just zone out and do it. I've biked 300km races and similar, so the distance isn't the problem.
- yosito 4y agoThis is interesting. It seems like the general idea is to climb the equivalent of the height of Everest from sea level (8,848m/29,029ft) in one activity with no sleep. Which, according to my understanding, is quite different than actually climbing Everest, which is normally a journey of several days that starts well above sea level.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- dspillett 4y agoHow you manage the climb can be quite an individual challenge too. Picking an incline I've traversed a few times in trail running events, up to highcliff nab near guidsborough which is about 170m climb over ~800m distance, you'd need to go up and down 56 times which I think is eminently doable (though far from easy) between sleep periods. I'd need a few leg rest breaks! While I'm certain I could physically do it, whether I could face the idea of actually doing it is another matter: endurance challenges can be a mental game as much as a physical one. If you skip the steepest part and do between the bottom and the track to Sutton that is ~100m height over ~550m distance, I think that would actually be more manageable though you miss out on the view from the top each time. Depending on your training for climb you might find it much easier to do a less steep incline, climbing the same amount over a longer distance possibly in a similar time, though for an Everesting challenge going steep feels more right. I'm thinking about this too much. I might be in danger of setting myself up for an Everesting challenge. I wonder how many times I'd have to go up & down the hill up to the local University… ---- Edit: hmm, that little hill is only 14m over 500m apparently. I'd have to cover 632Km and the longest I've ever done in one go is 129 (80 miles), that with just ~800m total ascent. Maybe this is not nearly as do as doable as I first thought! Maybe I'd do better going shorter & steeper. When the lungs have recorded from what covid did to them I might have to try train myself up for it.
- danielvaughn 4y agoI suppose you could get one of those air-restricting masks and simulate it to some degree.
- 4y ago
- tomerv 4y agoIn Haifa (Israel) there was a staircase race a few years ago, from sea level to the top of the city going up more than 1000 stairs. One version of this was doing it over and over so that the total is the height of the Everest. I'm pretty sure there were several runners who finished that successfully. https://haipo.co.il/item/9221 https://haipo.co.il/item/9221
- camillomiller 4y ago"everesting is a truly global challenge" ... proceeds to show a map where every country is shown as participating except for the largest part of Africa.
- prescriptivist 4y agoMy go to local hike starts at 450ft above sea level and goes to 1150ft sea level. However it has many ups and downs so the total ascent is ~1250ft. To the top of the mount/hill and back to the trailhead is roughly 4.5 miles. So to "Everest" on this hike using total ascent numbers I would need to do this hike 23 times, which would cover about 105 miles. Seems like I would need to take up extreme trail running to accomplish this in one go. Interesting idea but probably not for me.
- belter 4y agoIt's not Everesting without the "Cross the Crevasse" experience, and your Sherpas thinking the money you pay them, it's not worthwhile the Babysitting... - https://youtu.be/G4ZrD7IoFlo https://youtu.be/G4ZrD7IoFlo
- TheAlchemist 4y agoThere was a similar challenge in France recently - we were limited to 1h of outside exercise in the radius of 1km around your home during the Covid lockdown. The challenge was to do as much vertical ascent as possible under those condition (granted, the conditions were very dependent on where you live). Such a stupid idea, but so much fun !
- raverbashing 4y agoOh you mean people climbing it on a bike? It's funny when you notice that, while bikes are great on a level surface they're absolutely awful at anything moderately steep. Yes, even a multispeed bike. Doing it on foot sounds easier. Unless you're talking about a very shallow inclination
- snovv_crash 4y agoA lightweight bike is ~6kg, what you gain from not having the impact of each step and being able to control your heart rate while keeping your cadence optimal via gears IMO more than compensates for the extra weight.
- raverbashing 4y agoA bike rolls backwards when you're not pedaling. Also, depending on how steep it is (and for most gear ratios), not even your whole body weight can make the bike roll upwards
- snovv_crash 4y agoStanding takes a lot more energy than sitting - remember, the challenge is coming down again as well on each lap, but even on the uphill not having to support full bodyweight is an advantage, instead you just push with the effort you require on the pedals. And of course if you are in the wrong gear a bicycle will be ineffective... that's why you choose the right gear?
- freetime2 4y agoDon’t forget about descending, which you will do a lot of in this challenge. Descending on your feet takes quite a bit of effort to control and stabilize your descent, and is also relatively high impact. Descending on a bike, on the other hand, requires basically zero effort aside from squeezing the brakes.
- raverbashing 4y ago
- oezi 4y agoThis might be a bit too extreme. But any other reasonable sporting challenges outside the popular marathon/ironman/70.3 which average athletes with family life can approach?
- keiferski 4y agoDavid Goggins has a challenge called 4 X 4 X 48. You run 4 miles every 4 hours for 48 hours. https://www.gogginschallenge.com/ https://www.gogginschallenge.com/
- AtlasBarfed 4y agoI would rather run-job 50 miles and get sleep. That seems stupid. The line I draw in endurance is sleep deprivation. I'll stretch it to a 20 hour thing, but that's it. IMO if you are doing endurance activity (already questionable health-wise for anything over a couple hours IMO) with little to no sleep, then it doesn't seem like an actual positive thing in your life. Ragnar relay however is a hoot.
- thedailymail 4y agoFor me, a very average runner, the half-marathon (13 mi/21 km) is a great challenge in terms of time needed for training and achievability.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- InCityDreams 4y agoThe Barkley Marathons, and Bigs Backyard are two.
- almog 4y agoIt sounds like a fun challenge though I must say that I've heard not once, hikers describing a trail's total elevation gain as being such and such times "climbing Mt. Everest" (when trying to say that the total elevation was some multiple of 8848 meters). Even if you discount going back and forth between camps for carrying gear, the total elevation gain of climbing to an altitude of X meter will always be significantly larger than X (unless maybe you're climbing stairways).
- Yizahi 4y agoI'm not a climber or alpinist, but from several book accounts of Everest climbers I had a general gist that it's less about climbing and more about slowly (not) dying. Walking and climbing several steep kilometers while suffocating and freezing to death while simultaneously suffering from several high altitude illnesses (potentially deadly). So more accurate "challenge" would be riding an exercise bike outside in the middle of some winter cyclone for a few days, while wearing a mask restricting your airflow by a quarter and taking laxatives and psychotropic drugs.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- 762236 4y agoThis biking challenge can be accomplished on a nearby hill any time of the year, no winter cyclone needed. Most people would be unable to achieve it (training is necessary).
- bozhark 4y agoCan we just take some shrooms and call it even?
- matwood 4y agoMy favorite quote from Reinhold Messner who soloed Everest, did it without supplemental O2, etc... "When I rest I feel utterly lifeless except that my throat burns when I draw breath...I can scarcely go on. No despair, no happiness, no anxiety. I have not lost the mastery of my feelings, there are actually no more feelings. I consist only of will." - Messner on the first solo ascent of Everest Outside of Everest itself, I'm not sure there is much that can compare except other climbs at similar altitudes.
- roflyear 4y agoI'd die. I think I'm usually all feelings and no will.
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- kibwen 4y agoThe fact that this requires climing the height of Everest from sea level dovetails with something I've been thinking recently, which is: How much harder would be it be to climb Everest (or Denali, or Kilimanjaro, or...) if you chose to start from the nearest point at sea level? IOW, no getting transported to Everest base camp by vehicle and getting that 5km of vertical ascent for free; walk the 400 miles from the Bay of Bengal to Everest's peak on your own two legs. I think this would be a fascinating routing problem. If anyone's done this before, I'd love to know.
- hprotagonist 4y agohttps://www.rei.com/blog/climb/sea-level-to-everests-summit-sea-to-summits-origin-story https://www.rei.com/blog/climb/sea-level-to-everests-summit-... a few times. this one time it started a gear company.
- Mountain_Skies 4y agoKilimanjaro has high prominence so getting there from sea level probably won't be that much trouble as it's only a couple hundred miles from the coast and there are paved roads for the majority of the way. Wildlife and some locals could be an problem but odds are that you would be fine. It really comes down to if you're allowed to stop in at convenience stores along the way for food and beverages instead of carrying all of that with you.
- mb7733 4y agoI imagine Denali wouldn't be too bad because its base is only at 2000ft and it's not too far from Anchorage. Still a long walk though.
- deltasevennine 4y agoI've been to everest base camp. The distance up everest or the delta of the elevation gain isn't the hard part. The hard part is the weather and lack of oxygen. This "challenge" doesn't even compare. I mean nothing wrong with making a "challenge" but I think "everesting" is a bad name.
- qbasic_forever 4y agoAlso good for folks to realize base camp is at 17k feet and you typically go up to 4 higher levels of camp over the course of a few days. You aren't climbing 0 to 29k feet in one day--at most it's more like 4-5k feet in one day.
- mechanical_bear 4y agoHow is that “good for folks to realize”? No one is taking this challenge as an analog to climbing Everest. People are not out packing their bags to go to Everest after having done this.
- qbasic_forever 4y agoThe challenge is literally called "everesting". Your brain is working in a weird way if you're trying to claim there is no analogy or parallel being drawn here to climbing Mt. Everest. The point being made, which in your fury you seem to be completely missing, is that climbing Mt. Everest is actually _easier_ than this everesting challenge. A guided climb of Mt. Everest would have you doing no more than about 5k feet of elevation gain in a single day. Over the course of a week you would work up to acclimating and preparing for the summit push. This challenge has you doing 29k feet of elevation gain in a single day--even at sea level and on a bike that is a tremendous leap in athletic challenge.
- mechanical_bear 4y agoLol no fury here sir. And I understand the implications of the feat.
- graupel 4y agoI have no problem with the idea of Everesting; the issue I have is with a person I know who has made their entire identity revolve around it...but that's for another thread.
- skilled 4y agoUnfortunately, nothing quite compares to the rise in elevation like it does in the Himalayas. On the first day of your Everest Base Camp trek, you have to go from Lukla (9,300ft) (airport where you land if you go from Kathmandu, Nepal) to the first camp, which is right below Namche Bazar (11,000ft). The rise in elevation combined with carrying a 40lb backpack (average), and the difficult terrain leads to levels of tiredness that you can't quite achieve in any other scenario. A lot of it has to do with elevation of course, but the terrain on that EBC trek is absolutely ruthless. That first day when we got to the first camp, I have never ever in my life been that tired, and even my guide who was with me - advised me not to sleep too much as it will make it worse. I'm living next to a 1,800ft mountain right now (I'm in Norway) and I can do the roundabout hike in like 2 hours and yeah it stings physically, but it is maybe 1% of what you will feel in the Himalayas.
- tjr225 4y agoYawn.
- skilled 4y agoIf you've never been why would you comment on it?
- tjr225 4y agoIt requires about the same amount of effort I have put forward to not read the link, make some sort of weird braggy- unrelated- post so I can’t figure why you’ve taken the time to reply to me. To be honest typing this is the extent of how much I care. Farewell.
- lazyant 4y ago> my guide who was with me - advised me not to sleep too much as it will make it worse. why is this?, just curious since it goes against "common sense"
- skilled 4y ago
- runjake 4y agoPeople, we do not need 100s of comments detailing why this is not like climbing Everest at all. Everyone with a modest level of intelligence is already aware. “Everesting” is a tongue-in-cheek term for doing some physical activity with an elevation gain of 8,000m and some change. Disclaimer: I am a (retired?) alpinist.
- skilled 4y agoI respect that you are but you cannot disregard elevation. There’s a difference between 5k ft and 10k ft.
- runjake 4y agoDo you mean altitude?
- skilled 4y agoI don't see how both are different from one another in this context. Feel free to enlighten me.
- runjake 4y agoElevation gain is a measure of vertical distance. It is a common form of measurement in events like this. For example, ultramarathons will often tout something like “20,000 feet of elevation gain!”. This does not imply the ultramarathon is run up a 20,000 foot mountain but rather implies cumulative elevation. This is what Everesting implies, as well. Altitude is generally the distance from sea level and implies other factors in this context, namely atomosphere thinning.
- giuliomagnifico 4y agoI’m a cyclist and my friend have done it… it’s veery boring but it’s also a very cool challenge with themselves
- aamargulies 4y agoI 'climbed' Mauna Kea (mostly driving to the top, with a short hike from the parking lot). 13803'. Simply walking at that altitude, which is less than half the height of Everest, was so uncomfortable that I couldn't wait to descend. I can't imagine being at 29000 feet. I imagine it would feel like a living death.
- akeck 4y agoBtw, Everest and many other mountains are included in Wii Fit U when you have the fit meter, which has a basic altimeter. The game has both distance (walking and running) and height challenges. My SO and I had a lot of fun competing.