Electricity was buzzing all around him at just under 14,000 feet on Mount Lindsey in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, a tale-tell sign lightning was about to strike. But Denver’s Andrew Hamilton, 40, was driven by his goal to set a new speed record of climbing all 58 of Colorado’s 14,000-foot peaks.
“It was really kind of intimidating,” he said. “I just remember that buzzing.”
He had already bagged San Luis Peak, navigated Little Bear Peak’s mile-long knife ridge, and Blanca and Ellingwood Point that day, but still needed Lindsey to finish the range.
“At first, I turned around and went back but saw this rally dark cloud and an even darker storm coming,” he said. “I just had to go and went back up into the buzzing, and I got to the summit.”
Hamilton and his wife, Natalie, a medical student, live in Denver with their four children Calvin, 11; Axel, 8; Luke, 5; and Scarlett, 3. No stranger to the Rocky Mountains, the older boys have been on the roof of the state with their dad, which is close to how Hamilton got his start peak-bagging.
Hamilton was born in Salt Lake City, but his mother and stepfather lived in Cortez, where he would spend summers.
“I just remember one day it was July 4 and I was 11,” he said. “We decided we would go hike somewhere in the La Platas, Hesperus, I think. And from that one hike, every year I would come down for the summer and we’d do a lot of hiking. ... And that’s how I was introduced to doing fourteeners.
In college, Hamilton became a raft guide in Buena Vista, where the collegiate peaks stared him down. A new chapter began when a guide book, “Colorado’s Fourteeners,” by Gerry Roach, was released, complete with a chapter on speed climbing.
“At the time it (the record) was 16 days,” he said. “I remember thinking, ‘I could do 16 days.’ I just got it in my head.”
By 1998 he had climbed them all, and the next year he went for the record. He nailed it in 13 days, 22 hours, 48 minutes. Others came along and set new records, but when a man known as Cave Dog came along, a new bar was set.
In the summer of 2000, Teddy “Cave Dog” Keizer, now a politician in Portland, climbed all 58 peaks in 10:20:26. His record held for 15 years.
“It was a shocker that he took it down so low,” Hamilton said. “The way he’d link up some of those mountains, no one ever thought about it like that.”
Keizer grouped peaks near Silverton and Telluride, climbing the San Juan fourteeners in two days.
With the challenge becoming a sport of sorts, rules emerged: The clock would begin at 3,000 feet within the summit; summits could be linked but climbers must descend 3,000 feet after the last one; no aid is allowed while climbing; climbers can be followed and accompanied, but not led; and you must alert the previous record-holder of your attempt.
Climbers began using the Internet and social media to lay out their plans and updates, and a fanship was born. Satellite tracking devices could post locations of climbers wherever they were, and people followed.
In the decade since his own record, Hamilton had become hooked on 24-hour endurance and adventure racing, where he learned a few tricks he realized he could apply for a new record bid.
“When I first did the record, I was going for sleep,” he said. “I felt like if you’d take four hours of sleep you’d be fresher and faster, but I was learning from these really good (adventure racing) teams that these guys are going off no sleep. They’d get tired and take five minutes, refresh their brain and then go on. Over the years I began to believe this theory that you don’t need a whole lot of sleep.”
In 2014, Hamilton took another crack with a one-man support crew, but an injury to his shin on Mount Wilson became a debilitating condition eight days later in the Elks Range. Eight days in, despite excruciating pain in his leg and being stuck on a peak with his companion, he said that, overall, it ended well.
“We spent the night shivering on a ledge on South Maroon Bell,” he said. “All night, but we still made it pretty far. We felt good about how it went.”
In 2015 he’d take another stab, and this time, he gathered a large crew to help with everything, from driving to food, to packing and repacking, to first aid.
“Literally, the only thing they weren’t doing was hiking,” he said.
His friends and family would pick him up at trail heads and drive to other ranges while he slept and ate, often not even hungry.
“They were stuffing food in my face,” he said. “You can’t keep up with the amount of calories you’re burning.”
His friend, Andrea Sansone, was in charge of taping his legs. Cramps, sore tendons and fatigue were constant issues.
“I looked like a mummy,” he said.
And that was really his secret weapon – his support. They were there when mudslides blocked a road in the Sangre de Cristos, and he was with his younger sister when they saw a mother moose and her calf. In all, nearly 30 individuals helped Hamilton in his quest. Even Keizer flew out from Oregon to await Hamilton’s return from Longs Peak, joining others in a packed parking lot.
“It’s like the movie ‘Cars,’” said Hamilton, referring to a children’s cartoon feature film. “The main character is this race car that thinks he can do it all without his pit crew, but at the end of the movie, he finds out how important his pit crew is.”
