[LCB]

Hello – I listened to the Mountain Routes Over Coffee Ep 5 podcast, and had a question on the 1000m in an hour guidance for 14 camp to Denali summit on West Buttress Route.  The parameters shared were unweighted, wearing running shoes, below 6000’.  The rise is 3280’ any guidance on the run/gradient?  Any specific terrain to accomplish this effort?  Where would you put this in training?  Thinking this is a maximum effort test, not a Zone throttled test.  Being old and broken is there a similar decent standard that pairs with this guidance?  Looking through my training I see my best was 1650’ in an hour on a 24% grade section of trail, while doing 85% Zone 2 and below on a footy, rocky section.  Thanks, that was a great podcast!

[Shashi Shanbhag]

Can you please share the link to this specific podcast episode?

[Andrew Bollard]

@LCB:

Thanks for sharing this, I’d never heard of this podcast before! Some interesting food for thought. Can you give more details on what terrain you have access to locally and how high are your local mountains (if any)? Hard to answer your questions without more details.

I think it would be beneficial to summarise and contextualise some of the pertinent info below for the benefit of anyone who joins this discussion later.

At 22:02 Scott says:

One of the things that I have striven for with athletes I’ve coached, who I know are fit enough, is to go from 14 to the summit and back down in a day. I believve that that’s the most… the safest way to climb that mountain, honestly.

He goes on to explain that most commercial guiding companies establish a camp at 17,000′ (5,182m) because the fitness of the party usually isn’t high enough to make a one-day push from 14,000′ (4,267m) to the summit (20,309’/6,190m) and back down in a day. So, if I understand correctly, the one-day push is not the normal way that the West Buttress route is climbed, and only very fit mountaineers are capable of this.

Scott states that in his example of his one-day push with Colin Haley, they took 4-5 hours to summit from 14,000′. That would equate to a rate of ascent of 400-500m/hour above 4,267m in altitude. For Europeans like me, it’s very roughly analogous to reaching the summit of Mont Blanc from the Tête Rousse hut in 3 hours (this usually takes 6-7 hours for context). He further elaborates that he’s climbed Denali this way several times, including with people who had very little mountaineering experience (albeit cross-country skiers, so still very fit people). Also note that in TftNA, when recounting this story, Scott says that they were going at a conversational pace and chatting the whole way up and down. So, this rate of ascent was within their AeT.

Plotting at the route on Outdooractive, the average gradient for this route appears to be 27%:

So, not a super steep route by any means. With sufficient aerobic capacity and muscular endurance, it certainly seems achievable, although it’d still require a lot of training to reach that level of fitness and it wouldn’t happen in just a few months.

[Scott Johnston]

@LCB:  Great questions.

@Andrew Bollard:  Good feedback and analysis.

So I don’t have anything of significance to offer because Andrew did a good job with his reply.

The last time I did this was at age 52, and I was pretty bodily broken then as well. So, I can relate. At 69 I’m not sure I could pull off those times again.  You do not want to have to go at a max effort for this portion of the climb because going full out for 6-10 hours at that altitude will completely trash you for a few days.  So it needs to be a controlled aerobic effort.   It also depends on how well you do at altitude and how well-acclimated you are.  The only real way to know is to try it.  As a test, you might consider a car-to-car on Rainier’s Disappointment Cleaver or Ingrahm Glacier routes.  If you can do that 3000m in under 12 hours, you’d probably have a very good chance of pulling off the 14-summit on Deanli in about the same time.

Like most things in life, the answer depends on so many things.

Scott

[LCB]

Thank you Andrew Bollard, appreciate the great information, very helpful.  I live in Washington state, so have many mountains very close by.  Last September, before I knew about this evoke endurance training methodology, I climbed Pahto (Mt. Adams), 1700m to 3700m in 10 hours car to car, as my weekend warrior style training.  Will be interesting to see if this September I have a different experience and time.  Mountains are different every day, but still will be a fun comparison.

Scott thanks for the additional context and options.  That was a great podcast, as always.  I appreciate the knowledge you and your guests share.  If my orthopedist tells me I’m a good candidate for stem cell therapy, and it works for me, maybe this is something within the realm of the possible for me.  coach Leif might say maybe not, but always good to have a super stretch goal.  😉

 

[Andrew Bollard]

@LCB Lucky you! Where I live is fairly flat, so I’d have to drive 3.5 hours to reach the nearest mountains where I could attempt to test this 1000m/hour thing. I happen to be heading there in 2 weeks, so I think I’m going to give it a go out of curiousity. Not that Denali is on the cards anytime soon, but 1000m/hour unweighted is an excellent standard to aim for regardless of the objective.

[LCB]

Good luck Andrew, I agree it is an excellent standard.

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