A Mountain Bike Everesting’s Adventure-Comedy

Words by Ryan Short // Riding Images by Caleb Smith

The night before my first attempt at mountain bike Everesting was interrupted by a midnight home invasion. Over a tense hour of talks with the visibly enraged caper, several things were established: He had done really quite lovely work building this glass patio cabin out of reclaimed materials back in the ‘80s; That I was in fact the intruder, having been placed on the wrong schedule for claiming a night at this cabin; And that, yes, of course, it was perfectly reasonable that all he wanted to do was get in his hot tub naked at that moment – After all, he had just driven four hours in the middle of the night to find his own house filled with me and five vans worth of friends. 

None of these revelations did much to help me sleep. I only began the ride attempt because I had already laid out all my supplies, it was the 4am start time, “…and hell, I am not sleeping anyways.”  I ended up calling it a good effort 20,000 vertical feet later, hopping off my bike, and waking up in unknown woods the next morning in a campsite built by my lady Lacy and a few vans full of the remaining friends, the ones who had not fled the painful awkwardness of the night before.

My take on Everesting at the start of my first attempt was that it is cycling’s hardest meme. Sure it looks big, and sure it looks hard, but seemingly everyone with a Strava account and a penchant for big hard things has done it. While I appreciate (and some might argue require) the focused time and energy it takes to pull off a challenging ride, my first Everesting attempt was simply that – A big challenge, an arbitrary goal, and not necessarily a meaningful one. But if it is a meme, a challenge common enough to be a cliché of a big ride, then shouldn’t I be able to fuckin’ do it?

And so it goes that ridiculous goals are the hardest to let go of.

Nine months after a man had to walk past a dozen surprised mountain bikers to dip naked into his own goddamn hot tub, I once again, with all my gear laid out to begin a new Everesting attempt, wake up in the middle of the night to an apparent emergency. This time it is the fire alarm, screeching out the horrific fate of its 9-volt battery, which decided 1:30am on game night is the right time to start feeling a little low. It being easier to calm down a startled dog while ripping a fire alarm off the ceiling than it was to placate a man hell-bent on nudity, I decide to simply be thankful for the improvement and manage to be unconscious when the intentional alarm goes off at 4am. 

By 5:15am, with the pink and purple crepuscular rays of sunrise bursting through mossy trees, I am summiting my first lap of the steepest road in the county. In the name of vertical efficiency for this attempt, I have allied with masochism. My route up is a series of grades averaging 20% for 1.3 miles, coming in stair-step pitches of 30%, and rising 1250 feet per lap. It is a respectable physical achievement to pedal it even once without getting off to walk – From this first summit I have 23 laps to go. Or I suppose from the top, I have 23 and a half, as with 29,000 feet of climbing, comes 29,000 feet of descending.

The descent I am using is what under normal circumstances I would consider the perfect trail for my Hei Hei “down-country” bike, and a no-worries ringer for bike my handling. Taking this descent, at least on the first few laps of the day, I would describe it as moderately steep, smooth and flowing with tight berms and big arching turns. It has just the right-sized jumps for some comfortable loft, and it is packed with little side features to play on. There are a couple of steep rocky tech sections to keep you focused and add variety’s spice.

But here lie the demons of the mountain bike Everest. Having practiced a half Everest on this trail a week ago, I know that the depleted version of myself, the version pummeled loose lap after lap, finds it a different trail. It becomes a minefield of eyeball-loosening washboard. It becomes seemingly too steep for my xc-style brakes and tires to comfortably control my speed. It makes me heavy from slick dusty g-force-inducing berms. The jumps begin to mock my inability to land without wincing from the effort. And weighing most heavily on my mind are the steep, dusty, rocky tech sections that each time light up my consciousness with images of how far and hard my gripped body would fall onto jagged stones if I let myself get knocked off my line.

On the climbs, to the extent the pitch allows, I can take the day at my own pace, but the descent is designed with a certain speed in mind. If I try and go below the trail’s preferred speed to save myself pain or effort, then the jumps become too big, the turns become wallowy, and the drops and bumps go from navigable features to jarring impediments. I have to respond each and every lap, and to each and every feature, with exactly what the trail is asking for, not necessarily what I feel capable of giving.

I have been looking forward to how easy these first laps will feel, especially compared to how they felt at the end of my half Everest recon ride here a week ago.  What I am actually feeling is unnerving. I definitely felt better at this point during the recon, and at the end of the recon, I had deeply questioned if it was physically possible for me to do a second round of 15,000 vertical feet. Telling myself to settle into an easy pace and nail my nutrition, I lean into my previous big ride day experience knowing that if I manage to get those two right, there is nothing to stop me from moving forward except the eventual need to sleep.

It is the ground that stops me – Mid-way down the descent on only my second lap. It comes before I even realize we have a date coming. And it is not a gentle lover, bouncing me and sliding me 30 feet down the descent from where my bike had dropped me off.  Road-rash polka-dots me all over as I seem to have bounced cartoonishly at all angles. I get up slow and confused. This is my only real crash of the year, and it has come on a simple and non-descript corner of a trail that by now I know better than any other. It feels like it is going to end my biggest goal of the year less than 10% of the way through. My left leg – I cannot even stand on it, apparently having slammed my quad against my handlebars as they snapped shut on me. The idea of pedaling at all feels ludicrous. The idea of pedaling more elevation than I have ever pedaled feels impossible.

Were this any other day, with any fewer motivating factors – My previous Everesting failure, my feeling committed to this goal, the supportive expectations of friends and family – My ride would be done.

I gingerly descend, and so much as one can limp while pedaling, I start pedalimping back up the climb –But I do not make it far before I can no longer maintain my heroic wounded soldier attitude…

Pete just seemed too damned happy to see me for me to keep moping. I think he even managed to lick some salt off my whirring leg. At not much passed 6am, while I am still deep in what I thought would be the long early solitary period of my ride, Eva has come out with her dog on a 40-minute detour from anyplace to cheer me on, all before heading to work. Then, only a lap later, still deep in my expected twilight solo period, Jesse swings by for her pre-work lap and I get to do my first e-bike chasing. Matt, who stays and e-bike supports me for the next few thousand feet, follows her a lap later.

I had made little mention of this ride before it began. Yet, here I am in the middle of a parade of friends, bolstering my motivation, and perhaps more importantly distracting me from my abundant cornucopia of pains. The support parade continues as my family arrives. Steph, Corey, Emmeline, and Colden  – Sister, brother-in-law, niece and nephew – show up cheering and holding a crayon drawn “Go Uncle Ryan!” sign that will stay and continue to cheer me on. Right there with them, my girlfriend Lacy has arrived for the day, and she has brought our guy Roscoe, the nearly 14-year-old champion of hearts, Instagram, and hot dog breath. Like the happy crayon sign, but even cuter and more helpful, she will go on to support me all day, and he will go on to nap happily at home all day in a beautiful turnabout from the last time they both supported me an all day adventure when he nearly died of diabetic ketoacidosis (“Sam’s Commute” is a story from another day, and an even wordier blog post.)

The level of support I am receiving is both unexpected and beautiful. But despite its uplifting tide, slowly, lap by lap, a level of exhaustion creeps in that supplants any other emotions. Despite taking an easier pace, at around lap eight it is undeniable that I feel worse than I had at this point on my recon day. 10,000 vertical feet in five hours – A big day by most measures, yet I am only a third of the way done, and still three hours from the halfway point. My doubts are growing larger than my hopes.

Why in the name of Sisyphusian endeavors am I so mentally crushed? I am pounding water, energy drinks, cokes, pizza, gels, sugar-coated gummy peach rings, anything to help keep me going. I am still getting in over 500 calories per hour (the max of an exceptional ability to gorge on the fly) and am hydrated enough to have peed off the summit each and every one of my eight laps. My pace is staying on schedule and despite my right leg having to compensate for my bruised left, I still feel physically strong. I have support pouring in from my family and friends. Aside from my crash, today has been a shining example of how well an endurance escapade like this can go. With no other explanations for my difficulties available, I start to fear my only hunch.

Lacy has had COVID for the past few days, and despite her sacrifices of wearing an N-95 in her own house, sleeping in a separate room, and giving up her beloved couch and the cuddles that come with it, I am finding it dubious that we could live together and that I could then take on a ride this physically destructive and not contract it myself. I take a COVID test and am not so far from hoping for the wrong result in order to justify my dark mindset. But the test does come back negative – Giving me equal parts hope, and self doubt. It does at least give me license to keep trudging back up the hill.

The positive COVID test, it turns out, will not come for another 24 hours. Right now the virus simply gets to hide, multiply, and be a quiet vampire, sucking the energy from a body that has forsaken homeostasis for vertiginous glory.

Laps 8-13 are merely performative for me. I have experienced magnificent physical and mental recoveries on past endurance tests, but never the kind of miraculous recovery it feels like I need to finish this day. My goal now is simply to achieve a complete physical implosion – To so fully chew myself up in the meat grinder that it is obvious to myself, and all the people going out of their way to support me, that the idea of this spark-less, bloody, bruised blob of pain and exhaustion pedaling any further is visibly ludicrous. May the last words I hear be, “No, stop… He’s already dead.”

Some miracles come incrementally.

And with comfort comes familiarity. I have so familiarized myself with the climb that I no longer think of it as a two-part road and gravel ascent, but instead a nine pitch cast of characters, namely: Momma Bear, Papa Bear, Baby Bear, Penitent Pitch, Dub Step, Stevie Nix, Reverb, Approach, and El Cap. The three bears are the paved pitches (why the county continues to repave a road that avalanches its pavement into the ravine about twice a year is unknown to me), so named for their comparative lengths – Though I doubt anyone has ever described the Mamma Bear pitch as “Just right.” Penitent Pitch is the first gravel section and currently has a three-foot thick low-bridge of a tree fallen across it that every lap I must bow to get passed – “Only the penitent man shall pass”, for any Indiana Jones fans. Dub Step pitch follows, and as one of the mentally tougher pitches for me it perhaps deserves a more foreboding name, but instead it gets its name from the climbs only brief downhill at the end – It always has me waiting for the drop. Continuing to climb this mountain (and turnaround), similar to the original, the most memorable part about Stevie Nix is a landslide where a section of road bigger than any Fleetwood Mac set collapsed into the ravine below. While Reverb pitch simply reminds me of Dub Step, and Approach pitch is so dryly named because it leads to the base of El Cap, El Cap itself does earn its bold name. After climbing eight other pitches who I can promise all inspire some version of the thought, “This is so steep it doesn’t even make sense”, El Cap finishes with a wall steep enough to still impress with its steepness. To finish the climb, each lap I have 75 meters of dirt and gravel beyond 30% – And whether this is due the Stockholm Syndrome of being stuck with it for 24 laps, or simple masochism – I have come to appreciate this final crescendo of verticality as a fitting end to each lap.

Laps 13 through 20 are my montage, where I rally back to strength and tap out laps with the inevitability of letting time pass. It is long cold molasses time, and it takes all my strength to make the clock gears keep ticking – But it feels as inevitable as time normally does nonetheless. 

In this montage, Gretchen, Sam, and Kyle make their first appearances. They take turns telling me stories, with Gretchen’s tale – One of absconding with a stranger to hike the wilderness, in silence, for a month – Leaving me wondering if my Everesting’s transcendental glow will even be able to show up on camera if paired next to her monkish aura. Caleb is also now to be found dispersing himself through the woods, photographing the day from enough angles that he gives away his ability to bodily split into a full film crew. And as the sun finds its way to the opposite horizon from the ride’s beginning, Clayton comes and joins Lacy to take me through my final laps.

There is one thing that I was certain of at the start of this ride, that my recon ride had foretold, and that my corporal decline seemed to be confirming. Even if I can survive the climbing, the descending will beat me down to such a point that finishing in any condition less severe than long-term injury will be a success.

And yet, my fresh-bodied friends who continue to consistently swap out lap after lap in what is gradually adding up to the greatest parade of support I have ever experienced, do not seem to be simply humoring the stunted descending pace of a broken man. Diving deeper past 20,000 feet of descending and it still feels like I am leading an energized party train. The reality of the source of my good pace is probably closer to a party trick, however, as I never depart from a perfectly practiced single ribbon of tire track all the way down the smoothest and most efficient possible descending line – But I am proud to even keep up the illusion of vigor.

Checking in from 25,000 feet, now with a downward view to the summit of any mountain outside the Himalayas, the most important thing to note is that, while it seems from a statistician’s perspective that I am close to the finish, I am not. 4,000 vertical feet, starting from zero, is a solid day out on the bike.  4,000 vertical feet after having done 25,000, is taking the needle so much deeper into the red zone that the metaphor falls apart and the tachometer just cartoonishly explodes in an abundance of springs and gears. It is now 8pm. I started 15 hours ago. When I have fresh legs and a reason to hurt myself I can do one of these laps in less than 25 minutes – They are now taking closer to 50. The distance between just enough effort to keep momentum on the steepest pitches and my maximum sustainable effort has closed to nearly zero. My once disciplined nutrition regimen has devolved into little more than sugary fluids and the occasional handful of animal shaped gummies. Darkness is an hour away.

All this, and yet, my marquee headline right now is that hope and motivation are rising faster than physical decline, and that it is now clear friends are going to stick with me all the way through this day.

Three laps to go. Before the prodding devil on my shoulder had complete dominion, and the reasoned angel counterpart was still there to keep me from walking blindly into more insane ambitions, three laps is the most I would do of this route. The 21 hash marks already on my handlebars mock the memory of those more reasoned days.

At the top of lap 22 the sun tucks itself down in the trees opposite from where it rose on lap 1. I start the descent with some extra trepidation, unsure of whether my reflexes and capacity to read terrain in low light will be there to catch me, but

the same arduous repetition that has worn me down now turns around to hold me up. My lights might not even be necessary – I can let my body repeat what it has been doing all day, and so long as I do not interrupt the process by trying to think, my flow down the trail continues on its own. Clayton, having committed to riding the last laps with me, gives me a courtesy head start so that his lights will not be immediately behind me casting shadows. Despite him being comfortably faster than me in my best condition, he never does catch me, and as he feels certain that I could not possibly still be in front of him, as I wait at the bottom he has stopped to look around for signs of my lights pointing at some odd angle from a wrecked position in the bushes.

I envisioned my final lap as being a wistful victory run, filled with bittersweet goodbyes to each of the eight pitches, “Bye Stevie, we handled the seasons of our lives, didn’t we.” The physical and mental state of robotic inevitability that got me to this point comes at a cost though – Emotions take high-pitch energy, and I am relegated to exist in a much lower state, more Cohen than Nix. This last lap is not so much a victory march as it’s a cold and it’s a broken hallelujah.

At the top of my last time up Dub Step, I stop, just before the drop. I know a careful look at my route data shows this to actually be the top of Mount Everest. And so I mumble in the dark to Lacy and Clayton something to the effect of, “This is it.” They either cannot hear me or do not understand what I mean, so I hop back on the bike and pedal on.

While striving to do this deed, knowing great enthusiasm and riding the thunder may not come often and automatically for me – But after about ten laps of planning and meditating on it, it does come as one last flourish.

As I lead Lacy and Clayton up Approach, I stare up at the lower slope of El Cap that my light can reach. For the past hours, I have been conscious to not scrape the bottom of my energy bowl too hard. With what little room for energy savings there has been, with considerable focus over those hours, I have saved up for these last 30 seconds.

If I have one preternatural cycling talent, it is this. Regardless of how hollowed out of a burnt-up crust I am, there is a sprint left in me.

I light everything that is left in my legs on fire and sprint the final pitch. What poetry exists in the motions of this day, it lives here – Not written merely in my strong finish of a nearly 18-hour day, but singing in this gap I have just opened between me and the motors of my e-biking companions.

Standing in the dark at 29,500’, we high-five and we hug. I have achieved one of my largest goals, despite complete uncertainty. Exhausted, and still standing on top of a small mountain, most of my consciousness is taken up by how far I still am from a shower and a bed.

On the final descent I find it curious how much the fatigue of my summit sprint shines through what already seemed to be complete exhaustion – There is always more room for suffering. My reason to fear crashing now switches from not being able to complete my goal, to feeling like I do not have the energy to walk out of the woods should I have to. Still, I manage to eek some pleasure out of this lap, savoring the glass I feel in my bones on landings, the uncertainty in my arm strength on bumps, and the cramps in my palms under hard breaking, as the last time I get to experience them.

Rolling up to my base camp with Lacy and Clayton, it is 10:30 at night and finally time for my fairy tale ending. Gretchen, Sam, and Kyle are there with pizza, beer, and a chair.