Endurance sports legend Kilian Jornet has officially started his ‘States of Elevation’ challenge, during which he plans to climb all of the 14,000-foot peaks in the lower 48 by traveling only on foot and by bicycle. His quest to summit two qualifying peaks in Washington, 12 in California, and 58 in Colorado has started in the Centennial State with 14,259-foot Longs Peak.
Jornet didn’t just summit Longs Peak and come back down though. He continued onward to tackle the LA Freeway ridgeline traverse – a 38-mile stretch of technical scrambling in the Rocky Mountain wilderness that connects to South Arapaho Peak, tagging a total of 19 officially-named summits with about 21,000 feet of gain above 12,000 feet of elevation. The entire traverse took Jornet just over 16 hours to complete based on a social media update.
Once off the traverse, Jornet traveled 49 miles by bicycle at night to Echo Lake campground, which is in the area of Mount Blue Sky. Presumably, he’ll be headed up that fourteener next…