On July 15, 2024, Andrea Sansone and Andrew Hamilton established a co-ed supported quickest recognized time (FKT) on the Colorado 14ers. They summited the 58 Colorado peaks over 14,000 toes 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.
Thus far, 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 recognized 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, ability, and logistics, because the 58 peaks are scattered all through the state and vary from straightforward walk-ups to technical scrambling. There’s no set route for finishing the peaks, however an individual has to climb and descend no less than 3,000 toes to the summit for it to rely. There are then a whole bunch of miles of driving in between the peaks to barter, starting from good highways to tough four-wheel drive roads.
Sansone and Hamilton’s deep expertise with the Colorado 14ers allowed them to tag the summits as effectively as attainable, usually utilizing a few of the extra direct routes between summits to avoid wasting time and elevation.
Descending off of Mount Harvard beneath a stormy sundown.
The pair began the trouble 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, and so they quickly fell behind their aggressive objective splits.
The day previous to the trouble, the Durango-Silverton prepare, which they have 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 a substitute of rescheduling the trouble. By the point they tagged the peaks and returned, the prepare was working once more, and so they may get a trip 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 be capable to hit their goal time. Hamilton says, “The entire thing when it comes to our authentic pace estimates form of fell aside on the finish of Day 3. We truly had nice climate, however then as we have been doing this factor known as the Gash Ridge from Blanca [Peak] to [Mount] Lindsey, it’s such as you’re form of down-climbing the stuff, and my reminiscence is so unhealthy. I had advised [Sansone], oh, it’s only one arduous down climb, after which it’s a bit of cake. Nicely, it wasn’t a bit of cake. It’s truly actually arduous. After which the subsequent day, I believe 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 throughout the first half of the trouble, which was crammed with the extra technical peaks. Hamilton says, “It finally ends up being actually front-loaded with all the actually arduous ranges. And so by the point you’re on Day 4 or 5, you’re form of brain-fried. You’re on no sleep. We’re very assured climbers, however on no sleep, you simply form of neglect who you might be in climbing and being comfy together with your climbing expertise.”
To the pair, it felt like almost something that would go incorrect went incorrect. To explain it, Hamilton says, “We make a joke, as a result of we simply stored 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 arduous to search out pleasure when you’re doing it and revel in it since you simply maintain getting slammed within the face with all of those obstacles.”
Each agree that it was their crew and group that stored 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 a few of the four-wheel-drive strategy roads a lot sooner than a truck may, to Sansone’s sisters popping out to offer countless assist and encouragement, to a pal who was prepared to run everybody’s errands in order that the remainder of the crew may deal with the trouble, it was actually a workforce effort.
The crew sends the pair off on their third-to-last peak, Mount Bierstadt.
The big Colorado 14ers mountain climbing and climbing group additionally confirmed up for the pair. Sansone says, “I didn’t notice how a lot I wanted the assist from the group round me, the encouragement, the textual content messages, the voice memos, the 14ers.com discussion board. I imply, it was all essentially the most optimistic expertise, and I had a extremely massive low on Day 3 or 4 within the Creststones, and Andrew and I acquired 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 needed to stop a number of occasions. She says, “There was one time after we have been on Mount Huge and our videographer opened the door [to their van], and I checked out him straight within the digital camera and I mentioned, we’re finished.”
Hamilton then says,” And so Riley [Hanlon] handed me the video digital camera, and he’s like, ‘Nicely, while you get to the purpose the place you’re going to name it, simply make a bit video for me.’ And at that time, we simply stored mountain climbing, and we simply by no means took that step the place we couldn’t take yet one more.”
Andrew Hamilton and Andrea Sansone stand on the summit of Longs Peak, the final of their peaks.
A couple of days after ending the trouble on Longs Peak, accompanied by many buddies, the couple says they’re nonetheless removed from processing the complete effort. Sansone says, “It was an unbelievable expertise. And after we wish to simply undergo day-to-day, and there are such a lot of feelings with each single day. I believe the largest takeaway is that we didn’t stop, and that was the one factor: Irrespective of how arduous it will get, you don’t must 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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