This summer, a Jackson man set the record for the fastest known time for completing all 48 of New Hampshire’s 4,000-foot mountains in a single hike, unsupported.
It took 44-year-old Andrew Drummond four days, 22 hours and 43 minutes to complete over 200 miles, beating the previous record by more than 14 hours.
This isn’t the first time Andrew attempted this route, also known as the White Mountain Direttissima. He completed the trail in 2016 and tried again last year, but had to give up halfway because of an injury.
Andrew is also the owner of White Mountain Ski Company, and he spoke with NHPR’s All Things Considered host Julia Furukawa about his experience.
Transcript
So why did you decide to go on this big adventure?
This route, the White Mountain Direttissima, came across my plate back in 2015. A woman by the name of Arlette Laan had completed it the previous year, and she was on a podcast.
This is where I grew up. These are my home mountains. I spent my childhood peak bagging, trying to do all 48 and I think I hit that goal by the time I was 15. So there's a special place for the White Mountains, definitely, in my outdoor pursuits.
When I heard that Arlette had connected them all on foot in a single push, I mean, that sounded pretty wild to me. But it got me thinking, “Okay, she did it in X amount of days, what could I do?” Of course, there's a little bit of a competitive nature to see what could be done. And so I had the idea of [finishing the hike] under a week in that 2016 effort, and I was able to get it just under six days. Since then, other people have gone faster than me until I was able to get back on the trail this summer.
You hiked all 48 mountains unsupported, and that means something specific in the hiking community. Can you explain what an unsupported hike means?
Yes. There's guidelines officially now on the Fastest Known Time – FKT. You can do it fully supported. Then there's a self-supported type of effort. And now this is unsupported, where what I'm starting with is sort of what I'm ending with, except for water. So I'm bringing all my own food, my own sleep kit [and] I'm stuck with what I brought with me when I hit start. I can't have any outside aid, so I can't have anyone join me. I can't cache any items. And water is filled up from natural sources.
Tell me about the preparation for all of this. What's the training like?
It's hard to figure out how to really physically prepare for something like this because you obviously need to know the terrain you're going to be moving on and a lot of the trails, but the route is over 200 and say, 40 miles. And so that's a lot of terrain to become familiar with.
I spent a lot of time just making sure that I knew the route and knew where I wanted to cover each day and what would be the most efficient route. [I] spent a lot of time with a heavy pack, just getting used to what it's like to carry a 20-plus-pound pack. Ultimately I’m just out here in the White Mountains as much as possible.
Who was your support system through this? Was there someone you pictured in your head giving you motivation?
I look at the White Mountains sort of like this lifelong journal. I've spent so much time on these trails and they're incredibly special. Every time I hit a junction or something, it would bring up a memory, maybe with my partner or a previous hike. Or maybe a time that wasn't so pleasant or I had some hardship. And to have that all kind of written on the trails, to know that they're all going to sort of level out, like those highs aren't going to last forever [and] those lows aren't going to last forever. But just reflecting on previous time on the trails with friends, that in a way, makes [the hike] feel supported even though you're out there very much alone.
Tell us about the moment that you finished this whole thing. What were you feeling?
I was feeling relieved. So much goes into something like this, and I pushed very, very hard that last day. I woke up at 3:30 in the morning, and I knew I had 60 miles to cover in those 24 hours. So I knew I had a monster effort ahead of me. I would visualize about the finish the entire time.
It got really dark and challenging through the very last stretch. That's on the Kilkenny Ridge. It connects Mount Waumbek to Mount Cabot. It's remote. It's not traveled very often. It's not maintained very well. There's ferns up to your waist. You can't see your feet. It's at night. My headlamp is dying. All my batteries were dying. It's the very end of the trip. I'm obviously losing my mind a little bit. And I kept pushing.
I was able to get to Mount Cabot, the 48th peak. [I] had to look up the map a couple of times because I was really out of it, trying to make sure I was going the right way on the trail. I was that tired, if you can believe that. The trail is so technical, I was just happy to make it down, to make it down there and hit my goal.
I was approaching the trailhead and I could see the lights of my partner Hillary. She had driven to pick me up and started cheering for me. It was just her and my coworker here at the shop that were there to meet me—and my dog—and it was so perfect because this was a personal goal that meant so much to me. This is where I grew up. These mountains and this route, it's sort of like this keystone project that reflects who I am.
Obviously I was pretty beat up and I had to get off my feet. My whole body was aching. As you can imagine, it was a lot of physical and mental relief to just turn off for a second and be like, “All right. You did it. You're done.” And start the process of soaking it in.
So what was the reaction from the hiking community here in New Hampshire? And maybe also from folks who have done this hike as well?
Oh, it was huge. I didn't expect it at all. I spent a lot of my 2016 effort amplifying the route and the White Mountains. It's such an epic adventure that I want other people to experience, because when you're done with it, it completely changes your perspective on the White Mountains and what's possible.
So to share that with people this time again, it just seems like it reached a bigger community than the first time when I was trying to get the word out. I just put up a post online and it was so cool to see the community at large, both locally and nationally, reach out. To get that support, it's just a cool feedback loop. Hopefully it helps motivate [me] to do more stuff and to showcase the White Mountains, but it also hopefully gets the next person in line that wants to go and tackle a project like this, or just get out the door for their local hike, wherever that may be.
