I’ve always thought that Antarctica will be the most physically difficult expedition of all our 7 10DL expeditions. Until now I never had a structured way of thinking about how to measure “difficulty”. From a energy expenditure perspective, Antarctica will be the hardest. Here’s how I performed my calculations. 

1. The first step is to breakdown the activities of 10DL. The 10 Degrees Latitude is an expedition series that consists of 5 sports. Those being:

• Cycling 
• Open water swimming
• Kite assisted skiing cross country
• Hiking cross country
• Kayaking

2. The second step is to assume that calorie count is a proxy for “effort”. It’s possible to make a caloric estimate for each expedition assuming the athlete is 190 pounds and that each activity consumes a predictable amount of calories per hour at high exertion. Using this method we can figure out which of the 10DL expeditions is “hardest”, by virtue of the caloric expenditure required to complete it. The source for the calorie count information is here.

3. The third and last step is to type all this into Excel. The results show that the caloric expenditure ranges from the lowest of 57,500 calories in 10DL Australia to 138,000 calories in 10DL Antarctica. It’s not surprising that Antarctica is one of the hardest, and that calorie estimate doesn’t even take into the account the cold temperature, which will consume even more calories as our bodies try to keep warm. Below is the model I used.

The mental side of the “difficulty” equation is much more difficult to measure. I don’t have a measure for that.

Technically speaking the shoe is an innovation. The new fabric, named Flywire, has high-tensile Vectran threads (stronger than Kevlar) which cut down on weight and add stability. The technique also adds an original graphic look to the shoe.

We are going to test for vapor breathability, insulative ability, and wear. We’re going to climb stuff, get sweaty feet and hope these kicks look and feel great after thousands of feet of vertical gain and 50 pound packs.  We’ll be putting the kicks  through the paces on a few of Colorado’s 14ers in the near future. We’ll report back, stay tuned.

Neal and I took a break last weekend from all the current economic chaos to relax and refocus. 

What better way to recapture this perspective than to climb to the top of the second highest peak in the Continental United States?  Mt. Elbert (14,440 ft.) is 65 feet shorter than the tallest peak in the continental US, California’s Mt. Whitney (14,505 ft.).

It was an amazing weekend mountain climb.  We arrived at the trailhead at around 10 AM on Saturday morning.  Neal had planned the route on his Garmin and in our Suunto watches, so we were set to go.  The sky was total bluebird and it was unseasonably warm (45F).  We started out in base layers and packed 2 extra layers in our 30-pound packs.

We hit the tree line around noon and ran into a solo climber who had summited and was making his way back down.  He gave a very positive report of the terrain and weather as well as what turned out to be an overly optimistic estimate on our time to summit.  He guessed we were about 2 hours from the summit.  It turned out to be 4!

As someone who has climbed the 7 Summits and made a living as a climber, Neal was very patient with the skinny kid from Ohio who was making his first summit.  We reached the summit shoulder to shoulder.  It was amazing to stand at the top and absorb the 360 degrees of panoramic beauty.  That being said, there wasn’t much time to absorb it.  Wind speeds were 20-40 mph on the summit, and wind chill temps were in the single digits.

Special thanks to Suunto, Gu Nutrition, Eider Apparel, Deuter Backpacks and dear mother nature!

Here are the details:

• Mount Elbert
• Elevation 14,440, tallest mountain in Colorado, 2nd tallest in continental US
• Hiking Distance From Trail head: 9.5 miles round trip
• Elevation Gain: 4,700 feet
• Latitude/Longitude: 39.11780 N / 106.4447 W

…Wouldn’t you like to get away?  Some times you wanna go…