On July 15, 2024, Andrea Sansone and Andrew Hamilton established a co-ed supported quickest identified time (FKT) on the Colorado 14ers. They summited the 58 Colorado peaks over 14,000 ft in elevation in 12 days, 6 hours, and 43 minutes.
The duo is thought for his or her many efforts within the Colorado mountains, together with Sansone’s girls’s supported FKT on the Nolan’s 14 route and Hamilton’s males’s supported FKT on the Colorado 14ers, amongst many different spectacular efforts.
To this point, that is the primary co-ed supported effort for the Colorado 14ers. For comparability, Hamilton’s males’s supported FKT is 9 days, 21 hours, and 51 minutes and Danelle Ballengee has the ladies’s supported FKT in 14 days, 14 hours, and 49 minutes.
Andrew Hamilton and Andrea Sansone established a brand new co-ed supported quickest identified time (FKT) on the Colorado 14ers in July, 2024. All photographs courtesy of Andrew Hamilton and Andrea Sansone.
This co-ed supported FKT on the 14ers is a feat of endurance, talent, and logistics, because the 58 peaks are scattered all through the state and vary from simple walk-ups to technical scrambling. There’s no set route for finishing the peaks, however an individual has to climb and descend at the least 3,000 ft to the summit for it to depend. There are then a whole lot of miles of driving in between the peaks to barter, starting from good highways to troublesome four-wheel drive roads.
Sansone and Hamilton’s deep expertise with the Colorado 14ers allowed them to tag the summits as effectively as attainable, typically utilizing among the extra direct routes between summits to avoid wasting time and elevation.
Descending off of Mount Harvard underneath a stormy sundown.
The pair began the hassle on July 3 at 4 a.m. native time, with the unique objective of beating Hamilton’s 2015 males’s supported FKT. However points plagued them from the beginning, they usually quickly fell behind their aggressive objective splits.
The day previous to the hassle, the Durango-Silverton practice, which they had been utilizing to cut back the strategy distances to the 4 Chicago Basin 14ers within the San Juan Mountains, was stopped by mudslides. Undeterred, they walked the additional miles as an alternative of rescheduling the hassle. By the point they tagged the peaks and returned, the practice was operating once more, they usually might get a experience again to civilization.
Storms, knee points, rockfall, and a wide range of different points slowed the pair down, and by Day 3, they realized they wouldn’t have the ability to hit their goal time. Hamilton says, “The entire thing when it comes to our unique velocity estimates type of fell aside on the finish of Day 3. We really had nice climate, however then as we had been doing this factor referred to as the Gash Ridge from Blanca [Peak] to [Mount] Lindsey, it’s such as you’re type of down-climbing the stuff, and my reminiscence is so unhealthy. I had instructed [Sansone], oh, it’s only one onerous down climb, after which it’s a bit of cake. Properly, it wasn’t a bit of cake. It’s really actually onerous. After which the subsequent day, I feel after being chilly for a number of hours, our legs simply by no means actually got here again.”
Andrew Hamilton descends Gash Ridge off of Blanca Peak.
Sleep deprivation additionally took its toll, particularly through the first half of the hassle, which was crammed with the extra technical peaks. Hamilton says, “It finally ends up being actually front-loaded with all the actually onerous ranges. And so by the point you’re on Day 4 or 5, you’re type of brain-fried. You’re on no sleep. We’re very assured climbers, however on no sleep, you simply type of overlook who you might be in climbing and being comfy together with your climbing expertise.”
To the pair, it felt like almost something that might go improper went improper. To explain it, Hamilton says, “We make a joke, as a result of we simply saved getting slammed with one factor after one other. It’s like first the sleep deprivation, after which it’s your lungs and your wheezing, after which it’s your accidents. And it’s like, okay, what are we going to get hit with subsequent? It’s actually onerous to seek out pleasure whilst you’re doing it and revel in it since you simply preserve getting slammed within the face with all of those obstacles.”
Each agree that it was their crew and group that saved them going. From having a 0ff-highway automobile driver who’d been up all the 14ers beforehand and was in a position to shuttle them up among the four-wheel-drive strategy roads a lot quicker than a truck might, to Sansone’s sisters popping out to supply limitless help and encouragement, to a buddy who was prepared to run everybody’s errands in order that the remainder of the crew might deal with the hassle, it was actually a staff effort.
The crew sends the pair off on their third-to-last peak, Mount Bierstadt.
The massive Colorado 14ers climbing and climbing group additionally confirmed up for the pair. Sansone says, “I didn’t notice how a lot I wanted the help from the group round me, the encouragement, the textual content messages, the voice memos, the 14ers.com discussion board. I imply, it was all probably the most constructive expertise, and I had a extremely massive low on Day 3 or 4 within the Creststones, and Andrew and I bought on the discussion board, and we simply began studying individuals’s feedback, and we began crying. And I imply, simply the very fact of individuals sat there believing in us saying, you are able to do it.”
Over the course 12-plus days, the pair and their crew continued to climb peak after peak. Sansone says they wished to stop a number of occasions. She says, “There was one time once we had been on Mount Huge and our videographer opened the door [to their van], and I checked out him straight within the digicam and I stated, we’re achieved.”
Hamilton then says,” And so Riley [Hanlon] handed me the video digicam, and he’s like, ‘Properly, while you get to the purpose the place you’re going to name it, simply make a bit of video for me.’ And at that time, we simply saved climbing, and we simply by no means took that step the place we couldn’t take yet another.”
Andrew Hamilton and Andrea Sansone stand on the summit of Longs Peak, the final of their peaks.
A number of days after ending the hassle on Longs Peak, accompanied by many pals, the couple says they’re nonetheless removed from processing your entire effort. Sansone says, “It was an unbelievable expertise. And once we need to simply undergo day-to-day, and there are such a lot of feelings with each single day. I feel the largest takeaway is that we didn’t stop, and that was the one factor: Irrespective of how onerous it will get, you don’t need to stop.”
Andrew Hamilton and Andrea Sansone (entrance) with most of their crew after establishing a co-ed supported FKT on the Colorado 14ers.
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- Did you comply with this FKT effort as Andrea Sansone and Andrew Hamilton made their approach round Colorado?
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