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 understood 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 images 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 no less than 3,000 toes to the summit for it to depend. There are then a whole bunch 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 potential, typically utilizing a number of 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 trouble on July 3 at 4 a.m. native time, with the unique aim of beating Hamilton’s 2015 males’s supported FKT. However points plagued them from the beginning, they usually quickly fell behind their aggressive aim splits.
The day previous to the trouble, the Durango-Silverton practice, which they had been utilizing to scale 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 practice was working once more, they usually might get a trip again to civilization.
Storms, knee points, rockfall, and quite a lot of different points slowed the pair down, and by Day 3, they realized they wouldn’t be capable of hit their goal time. Hamilton says, “The entire thing by way of our authentic pace estimates form 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 form of down-climbing the stuff, and my reminiscence is so unhealthy. I had informed [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 trouble, 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 form of brain-fried. You’re on no sleep. We’re very assured climbers, however on no sleep, you simply form of overlook who you might be in climbing and being snug together with your climbing abilities.”
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 onerous to search out pleasure whilst 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 neighborhood 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 number of the four-wheel-drive strategy roads a lot sooner than a truck might, to Sansone’s sisters popping out to offer infinite assist 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 trouble, it was really a staff effort.
The crew sends the pair off on their third-to-last peak, Mount Bierstadt.
The massive Colorado 14ers mountaineering and climbing neighborhood additionally confirmed up for the pair. Sansone says, “I didn’t understand how a lot I wanted the assist from the neighborhood round me, the encouragement, the textual content messages, the voice memos, the 14ers.com discussion board. I imply, it was all probably the most optimistic expertise, and I had a very large 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 instances. She says, “There was one time once we had been on Mount Large and our videographer opened the door [to their van], and I checked out him straight within the digicam and I stated, we’re performed.”
Hamilton then says,” And so Riley [Hanlon] handed me the video digicam, and he’s like, ‘Properly, whenever you get to the purpose the place you’re going to name it, simply make just a little video for me.’ And at that time, we simply stored mountaineering, 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.
Just a few days after ending the trouble on Longs Peak, accompanied by many pals, the couple says they’re nonetheless removed from processing the complete effort. Sansone says, “It was an unimaginable expertise. And once we wish to simply undergo daily, 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: Regardless of how onerous it will get, you don’t should 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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