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Colorado has approx. 52-55 (depending on your point of
view) mountains over 14,000 feet high. They are called the
Fourteeners. In Recent years it has become very popular to
climb the fourteeners. A difficult goal is to climb all of
them. It took me 12 years to climb them all. I started climbing
them with my step dad Henry Siracusan when I was 11 years old.
A few years ago, I heard about a record for climbing the fourteeners. The record was to see how fast you can climb all of them, and at the time the record was just over 16 days. For some reason, the idea got in my head to try to set the record, so I spent the last year getting up to date on the record (just over 14 days) and scouting out some routes on the mountains. In late August, 1999 I made my attempt. I recruited my friends and family to drive me to the summits and take care of me. The two weeks that followed were two of the most difficult, painful weeks of my life. After some initial bad luck, I changed my original goal of 12 days to a new goal of just trying to beat the fourteen day barrier. With a little luck and some help from my support team, I was able to set a new record at 13 days, 22 hours, and 48 minutes. I didn't beat the old record by much, but after all the setbacks, I was just happy to be finished. If you want all the details, I wrote up a detailed account of the adventure based on my memories and notes from my climbing logbook. Thanks to everyone who followed along on the website, and to all the people who have emailed me their congratulations. I am very happy to know that some people were inspired by the adventure.
I can never thank my support team enough, without them I would have
never had a chance. My support team:
Brenda Siracusan (my mom) |
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