I've done 10,000ft in 18 miles in 7hrs, and have done 9,000ft in 32miles in under 9hrs. I'll be running Bighorn 100 in June...That will be 42,000(21 up/21down) in gain and loss and I'm hoping for around 28hrs or less.

My personal best is 13,000 ft. of gain in a car to car push of Black Kaweah and Red Kaweah.

I think of it as vertical speed, and for me its 2100 feet/hr, which was my average for Rim2Rim2Rim, which is non-technical, but is also 33,000 feet. It would probably take me twice as long to do the Hard Rock 100, based on terrain alone. I have heard that elite ultra runners can ascend at 6000 feet/hr, which would make something like Mt Shasta a walk in the park. If 24 hours is the limit, I think anything starting in the hot valley or Eastern Sierra and finishing in snow and returning is pretty neat. I've done that on the Yosemite Traverse, above Mirror Lake. Usually about 8000 -10,000 is all we can gain when climbing a peak, unless we're doing several.

The actual Shasta ascent record is something around 4000 ft/hr, starting at the hut and using track spikes. Most solid ascent FKTs (e.g. the Grand Teton, Whitney) are somewhere in that range. I believe that in vertical K races on optimal courses, the best racers are around or a bit over 5000 ft/hr. R2R2R is way too flat to get anywhere close to your max ascent rate.

seano wrote:The actual Shasta ascent record is something around 4000 ft/hr, starting at the hut and using track spikes. Most solid ascent FKTs (e.g. the Grand Teton, Whitney) are somewhere in that range. I believe that in vertical K races on optimal courses, the best racers are around or a bit over 5000 ft/hr. R2R2R is way too flat to get anywhere close to your max ascent rate.

Kilian Jornet would destroy the Shasta record, but he's focused on the 7 summits. Doubt he would ever bother with Shasta, but his VO2 MAX translates into insane vertical efficiency.

WyomingSummits wrote:Kilian Jornet would destroy the Shasta record, but he's focused on the 7 summits. Doubt he would ever bother with Shasta, but his VO2 MAX translates into insane vertical efficiency.

I'm actually not so sure about that -- he might beat it, but probably not by much. Kilian ran the Grand Teton a few years ago, and was promptly beaten by Andy Anderson, whose performances on the Grand, Longs, and Whitney are in the same ballpark as the Shasta record. Shasta is closer to a pure vertical ascent, but the mixture of snow and volcanic crap is far from ideal.

I did roughly 15k in one day a decade ago, but so did almost everybody else on that particular bicycle ride. Tour of the California Alps, aka The Death Ride.

Vertical speed at that point was a pretty consistent 2k per hour.

After that I retired from racing, got fat, and am now returning to the mountains before middle age sets in too thoroughly.

Mine was Mt. Whitney...6100 feet or so. I tried Cactus to the Clouds once but spent way too much time trying to find my way in the dark and had to abandon the attempt. I gotta try again....

I believe the greatest vertical gained in one day while hiking is in the 95,000+ feet range. How is that possible? Dan Schilling jumped 201 times off the Perrine Bridge in Twin Falls, ID on July 8th, 2006. Each climb back up is about 480 feet. Of course he didn't have any vertical descent on foot.