SOAR Athlete David Hedges makes an attempt to retake the Nolan's 14 FKT. Nolan's 14 is a link up of 14 distinct 14,000ft peaks in Colorado's Sawatch Mountain Range.

Words: David Hedges

Photography: Luke Webster

7 weeks of camping in the mountains, training hard, visualizing the effort down to each and every sensation, rehearsing the lines in my head. I had set the Nolan’s 14 FKT in 2023 and knew how hard, but also how incredible, the experience of linking those peaks in one continuous push could be. Chopping nearly 4 hours off of my time from that year, however, was something that I wasn’t sure I was capable of. So much can go wrong up there.

So I used my training block primarily to shore up the mental aspect by working in a mini overload (read exhaustion) period, checking out new-to-me ridges and mountains in Colorado, hitting a couple of key high-altitude grindy sessions, and recovering back home in New Mexico. It worked. Despite some challenges around receiving permission to pass through a fire closure from the Forest Service the week of the event, coordinating a fairly hefty crew, and anticipating a big late-monsoon storm system, I showed up to Blank’s Cabin Trailhead on Sunday, September 14th, dialed.

I was entirely focused, maximally in the zone, in a way that I had only ever experienced once before, which was for the WURL FKT I ran last year. So the snowy and icy and windy high country didn’t get me down. In fact, with the burnt colors of fall painting the mountainsides and the snow crowning it all, the views were magical and I really enjoyed that first day. I had help from an amazing crew of CO and NM crushers and I ran Mt Princeton and Mt Yale with some good friends, new and old. We also had the company of a large band of fluffy mountain goats in their winter coats on Princeton which was extremely cool.

The long September night was rough at first. Winds were whipping out of the West as I climbed Mt Columbia and traversed over to Harvard. I ran out of food and got fed up with the snow drifts and frozen tundra. After fording Pine Creek and its surrounding wetlands, fighting the willows across that small valley, I botched my carefully devised lines up Mt Oxford and hit a major low point heading up the rest of the way. Shivering (I had underpacked layers), hungry, and frustrated, I met Morgan Elliot on the top of Oxford whose handwarmers, gels, and company helped turn the night around for me.

We headed west to Belford, scrambled up Missouri, did our best to stay upright on the frozen scree on the way down to Clohesy Lake, rallied up Huron, and descended into Winfield. I missed my crew there, due to a misunderstanding of directions, and I climbed La Plata in the new dawn, hungry but motivated. I had been low on food and completely out of electrolytes for many many hours by that point and I knew it would be a minor miracle to be able to come back from that level of depletion. But I saw my crew after fording the river between La Plata and Mt Elbert and filled up with as many calories as I could.

Noah Williams picked me up there and we hiked up Bull Hill and over to Mt Elbert, the highest peak in all of Colorado, in a steady fashion. I was 9 minutes back from Francois at the top. The snow and ice had largely cleared up by about midday there so it was relatively little trouble jogging off Elbert’s ridge and into the giant, rock-strewn basin below that can be so cruxy that many hours into an attempt. But we nailed the line, hopping on the best scree that exists on that mountain and taking it to the well-trodden elk trails that lead you to Halfmoon Creek. A bunch of friends had hiked in to see Noah and I there and they were extremely encouraging. But the final climb, up Mount Massive, was brutal. My body was protesting loudly from head to toe. Time slowed down and it felt like I was hiking through jello. We finally gained the ridge, said high to a friendly mountain goat, and began our descent.

We had 1:40 to make it down to the Fish Hatchery to tie the record and we were 9 minutes back again from Francois as we began heading down. It took me a couple of agonizing miles before I was able to find my stride again. But Noah, a proud resident of Leadville and the Sawatch Mountains, knew the line perfectly and told me to just stay on his tail. I had to dig deeper than I ever have before, but I held on. We made up just under 20 minutes on Francois on that final descent and I finished in 35 hours, 23 minutes, and 15 seconds, breaking the record by a margin of 10 minutes.

My short term memories of the attempt, in the days following, were pretty traumatic, but with some time and rest and reflection, I am proud. It was a real adventure out there, it was beyond gorgeous, and though I did around half the peaks solo I had a lot of support, and I’ll look back on this last part of the summer and this Nolan’s effort with a lot of fondness.