Andrew Hamilton's Peak Adventure

by Wendy Underhill

Boulder’s Andrew Hamilton is a mild-mannered computer programmer by day and an adventurist by nature. This summer he played “Can You Top This?” and won. What Hamilton topped were all of Colorado’s highest peaks. Commonly called the fourteeners, these 54 peaks are above 14,000 feet in elevation. Each is a tough full-day hike for most climbers. Only two - Pikes Peak and Mt. Evans - are attainable by car because roads were blasted to their summits decades ago.
For hardy Coloradans, climbing all fourteeners is usually a lifetime’s achievement that requires some technical skill, lots of driving and tremendous stamina. The last speed record for summiting all fourteeners was set by Rick Denesik in 1997, who did it in a crazy 14 days, 16 minutes. Hamilton wanted to summit all 54 peaks in 12 days. Why? In the spirit of the best mountaineers, simply because the record was there. (His actual words were, “I don’t really know why I decided to do it.”) He didn’t make his 12-day goal, but he did shave 1 hour, 28 minutes off Denesik’s record.
Who’d have believed this from 24-year-old Hamilton? A guy who, at age 7, lay down on a trail, kicked his feet and said, “I’m not going any farther!” Who climbed his first fourteener with his stepfather when he was barely a teen and “hated it a lot of the time. I just remember looking at his calves going uphill.” Who loved debate—not sports—in high school, whose brain power was noted in kindergarten (when he was given special math assignments), and whose physical prowess didn’t attract notice until college. Described by co-workers as “low-key,” Hamilton is the type team managers want on their side. So how did he manage this feat?
An exploit of this magnitude requires planning, and Hamilton mapped his trip beforehand. It could be done in 12 days, he determined, given the right weather, proper health, sufficient technical support (folks who could drive him from trailhead to trailhead, and stuff him with high-calorie meals along the way), and a willingness to hike day and night.
To this day Hamilton admits, “I’m not much of a runner,” and that’s probably true if you compare him to world-class marathoners or even to Denesik, who ran up and down the fourteeners. But Hamilton easily can gain 2,000 feet of elevation in an hour “if the trail is steep,” and aspires to 5,000 feet. Not a runner, perhaps, but definitely an endurance athlete.

NO PAIN, NO GAIN
The first hitch in Hamilton’s plan came on day one, when he climbed five peaks. In typical Colorado fashion, the weather was balmy on the first peak, turned to sleet and fog on the next four, and cleared by the fifth. But an old knee injury flared up enough that Hamilton wished the trip could be called off.
The second day, he conquered another five peaks shrouded in clouds. The knee pain eased but was replaced with others along the way, including an ankle injury that was “screaming” by the final day.
The third day, Hamilton got started late because he was falling asleep at the wheel and had to pull over for a nap—the last time he tried to be his own driver. The first chore: a nasty mountain bike ride up a rail bed to the Needleton Trailhead. “This wasn’t supposed to be a difficult day,” he reports, but it started at 1:30 p.m. instead of early morning.
Above Chicago Basin on Mt. Eolus, Hamilton met a runner coming down the trail with a long gash on his shin. The man reported that his friend had fallen and might be dead, and that he was running out for help.
Hamilton did the only thing a decent guy could do—search for the fallen hiker, who was indeed dead. Hamilton straightened the limbs a bit, covered the face with a bandanna and called 911 on his cell phone. (He also thought to himself, “It’s a lot more interesting to help with something like this than to set a record.”)
Hamilton relayed the tragedy as best he could to a faint voice on the receiving end, gave the coordinates, and then summited Mt. Eolus while waiting for a helicopter to arrive. The end result: He’d used up six hours but wouldn’t have it any other way.
Somehow the dead man proved to be a cautionary tale for him, too. For the rest of his trip, the man’s face haunted Hamilton: “This is what I could look like with one misstep.”
After the tragedy, Hamilton did two more peaks in the dark, bivouacked in a space blanket (a piece of safety gear similar to a body-sized sheet of heavy aluminum foil) during a storm, and returned to the trailhead at 11 a.m. the next morning.
The hiking continued that day, with Wilson Peak, El Diente and Mt. Wilson. This day included a second emergency bivouac and one of Hamilton’s few opportunities to be totally lost.
It’d be impossible to say Hamilton’s trip was routine after its inauspicious start, but within the context of sleep-deprived maniacal quests, it may have been. As Hamilton slipped further behind schedule, rest was one thing he denied himself. At one point, he was so delirious he swore he saw “two little elf guys who were mad at me for not calling in to Mom” prodding him on. When possible, Hamilton did call in from summits, usually the only place his phone signals would connect.
Day 14 arrived on Sept. 8. Hamilton started up Quandary Peak at 3 a.m.; by 6:30 a.m. he was down and in the car to Torreys Peak and Grays Peak, which he climbed in less than three hours. That afternoon he climbed Mt. Bierstadt and a ridge to Mt. Evans, then hiked down. Last but not least was the four-hour drive to the base of Longs Peak, the closest peak to Boulder and the final challenge. He left the car at 8:50 p.m., signed the register at 1:05 a.m. in the fog, climbed up and scurried down as quickly as his bad ankle would allow, unable to see much of anything. As he neared the trailhead, he began to see hikers beginning their days’ trek up this quintessential mountain. One even asked if he was headed the wrong way!
It was 4:18 a.m. when Hamilton returned to the car with ponytail swaying, perhaps the only part of him that still appeared to have any joy in movement! “While attempting to set the record, I didn’t enjoy them [the peaks] all that much because my body was hurting,” Hamilton says. “During the record, I probably enjoyed finishing on Longs Peak more than anything else.”

OPEN FOR DEBATE
The attention Hamilton has received for his adventure has been both congratulatory and disparaging, as he’s become a central figure in a debate about using wilderness to set records or smell roses.
His answer: “I can’t say those two weeks were enjoyment, but it’s not like you never go out there except to set records.” All summer he hiked with family, friends and anyone who was willing. “I like the technical peaks when I’m out having a good time,” Hamilton says, “the Crestones, Sunlight, Maroon Bells, Pyramid and Capitol.” In short, Hamilton loves spending time in the mountains - enough that he’s buying a cottage in Jamestown, a mountain town of 279 residents northwest of Boulder. The chief attraction of his new home? A backyard sign that says “Boundary, Roosevelt National Forest.” Perfect for a man who knows no boundaries when it comes to climbing.

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