[Closed] Help me with MTB Everesting

Define MTB 😉  Do you just mean anything that isn't a skinny-tyre roadbike that might, therefore, include gravel?

There are a couple of routes near me in Glen Feshie where an off-road Everesting attempt would be possible. I can think of a couple of others on the other side of the A9 too (one is a loop) but it really comes down to how many repeats you could be bothered with.

For it to be a true Everesting, it has to be up and down the same hill. Otherwise it's just a very climby ride!

The obvious one that strikes me as a true off road up and down is Roych Clough from the stream at the bottom either up towards Rushup or go the other way to Mount Famine. First one is not all rideable, second option is touch and go a bit depending on conditions, fitness etc. Both have gates in them though which would make it a pain.

That's always going to be the main issue, finding a track that's not constant stopping for gates.

Jagger's Clough and the routes up to Hope Cross are probably worth considering too.

Bear in mind the logistics too (food and drink). It's s lot of stuff to carry in and stash somewhere which is why a car parked on the climb comes in very handy!

From Cairngorm carpark up the landy track to the Ptarmigan and back down Windy Ridge. Or go all the way to the summit and ride down Fiacaill Coire Cas. All off road, all rideable up and down. Would need to check how many laps you'd need.

For it to be a true Everesting, it has to be up and down the same hill. Otherwise it’s just a very climby ride!

Absolutely this. Everesting is more about the mental challenge of doing something hateful and tedious hour after hour than the physical challenge of just climbing that far. It's the absolute acknowledgement that you can suck all the joy out of something simply by picking an arbitrary target to achieve.

Just go for a long ride, enjoy it and if it happens to cover 8k of climbing, bonus.

(IMO anything likely to give you that sort of climbing in one ride its going to fail to meet your "not possible on a road bike" criteria. There's a reason national championship level mtb marathon is shorter than a wiggle sportive for over weight mamils)

FFS, just find somewhere you enjoy riding and don't overthink things.

As said above, you have to ride up and down the same road/trail. If you were doing that on a ‘not possible on a road bike’ trail, that would be some serious physical effort and concentration, for a lot of hours. The reason the off road guys do it on a fire road is so they get a break on the way down. You wouldn’t have that on a rough trail.

Yeah, nah.

Hardly onerous rules! Ride up and down the same hill in one continuous activity under your own power until you've ridden the height of Everest.

If you know the strava segment ID then plug it into here https://everesting.cc/app/lap-calculator/ and it will tell you how many laps you need to do along with how far you'll ride and how hard it's likely to be. Obviously "hard" is relative but there's a sweet spot between too easy an angle and therefore it's either a long hill with a lot of time wasted for descent or a short hill and you've hundreds of laps. Too steep and you'll be most likely pushing towards the end.

There's been a bit of activity on the fastest Everesting challenge recently, Lachlan Morton is the current holder of the fastest time - under 8 hours!!!! - but the previous holder, Keegan Swenson said he chose his segment because it was very easy to descend, basically straight enough that he didn't have to brake until just before the turnaround at the bottom. His average speed on the descents was 80kmh!

I managed an Everest last year at Kronplatz in South Tyrol. 9,300m of elevation gain /descent.

Admittedly the cable car helped, but the descending was on proper gnarly enduro trails.... 😁

Kiwi guy I know just did an Everest in BC , think it was a gravel road climb and a black diamond descent !

Silver Glen in the Ochils would be a good one to do:

Steep landy track climb on gravel/rubble all the way.  Just 18 laps required.

https://www.strava.com/segments/4759610

Doesn't take you to the top of anything though so you would want to turn right and climb on to Ben Buck at the least. That would also add some height and reduce the number of laps required 🙂

I did this two days running once - never again.

PS: Got into a debate with a local Scout leader about this during the week on social media.

She'd over-estimated the climbing on a hill by 30% by including GPS drift (look at a map FFS!)

Everesting on a mountain bike

Obviously “hard” is relative but there’s a sweet spot between too easy an angle and therefore it’s either a long hill with a lot of time wasted for descent or a short hill and you’ve hundreds of laps. Too steep and you’ll be most likely pushing towards the end.

Yeah, Everesting is a combination of being fit enough to ride up and down hills basically all day; the planning and logistics challenge of finding the "right" hill that's rideable, the food and drink to sustain you etc; and the mental challenge of overcoming the boredom.

I did a "very climby ride" on the CX a couple of years ago for a Rapha Rising challenge - they'd picked 4600m as the height gain over two queen stages of the TdF or Giro or something and put a challenge out to ride that height in a week. I did it in a day by virtue of finding all the road and gravel climbs near me that I could and just stringing a route together (no up and down reps). Took 200km to achieve it. So a route that does nearly double that climbing purely off-road is going to be one hell of a long ride!

There's probably a "partial loop" of the Red or Black at Glentress or Inners where you could ride up mostly fireroad, descend mostly singletrack and get the required height...?

Càrn Bàn Mòr from Achlean farm is 750m in 5km. I'm not sure I could manage 2 of those, never mind 12.

Càrn Bàn Mòr from Achlean farm is 750m in 5km

Goodness me. Not thought of that route for a while. I did it the day Lady Di died. Which must make it a good twenty years...

For it to be a true Everesting, it has to be up and down the same hill. Otherwise it’s just a very climby ride!

Like I said, I'm not interested in that particular part of the challenge.

The obvious one that strikes me as a true off road up and down is Roych Clough from the stream at the bottom either up towards Rushup or go the other way to Mount Famine. First one is not all rideable, second option is touch and go a bit depending on conditions, fitness etc.

Yep, bit the problem is that neither side would be rideable after the first few goes

Jagger’s Clough and the routes up to Hope Cross are probably worth considering too

Agreed. Roman road and the other one very close to it running in parallel sounded like an option

FFS, just find somewhere you enjoy riding and don’t overthink things.

I'm so sorry for discussing this on a MTB forum. Are we only allowed threads about Corbyn , Brexit, wheel size and pictures of people's new bikes on their back garden now?

So sorry.

From Cairngorm carpark up the landy track to the Ptarmigan and back down Windy Ridge. Or go all the way to the summit and ride down Fiacaill Coire Cas. All off road, all rideable up and down. Would need to check how many laps you’d need

Now that is definitely a candidate for a pure challenge. Alas I doubt id manage the climb more that a country times in the day. Lovely idea though
Also not an option for a week on Wednesday....for me.

I suspect the 'do it on the same hill' thing is more about the ease of completing it than the mental challenge it brings - smashing up and down a 10% gradient is obviously much more efficient than peddaling along a load of flatish bits to get to the next hill that adds any real value.

I wouldn't fancy it mtbing though - south downs way in a day is a lot of climbing, but less than half an everest

I'd do this one 56 times. Rideable both ways. If I matched my fastest time for the climb and the descent every time it would take me about 23.5 hours 🙂

https://www.strava.com/segments/1599450

Ha - I had been thinking about doing one a month back, I even went and scoped out some of our local road climbs to pick the best gradient and climb length to suit and very quickly realised that doing it safely with other traffic coming for 24 hours was a non-starter, so decided to do it on one of the climbs on the SDW where I if I fall asleep on the bike its just a hedge to climb out of rather then a car bonnet.
Its only 74 climbs. How hard can that be?

Then I had to have my tonsils removed pdq.

Back on the trainer at last so its all shelved for a couple of weeks.

This is going to be Type 2 fun

Up and down the bridleway on Cadair Idris about 12 times?

so decided to do it on one of the climbs on the SDW

out of interest, which one? Tank tracks (the segment 'absolute b*stard' on strava) is near me, and leads up to the SDW, but with 136m of ascent in 0.9km, its hard enough when I'm fresh let alone after 65 attempts 😀

Thanks for the video links. Seems to suggest two things.... In order to make the descent proper MTB, and the ascent rideable, they need to be different trails. Ie s loop instead of a there'n'back.

And also, trail centre sounds like a good plan.

Starting to think that Lower Cliff at Cannock would be a good option. Up the fire road for a bit, up Insidious Incline and then down. Around 80m height gain according to Ttrailforks.

I seem to recall that you can part right at the bottom of it as well, which is pretty essential for pit stops.

Starting to think that Lower Cliff at Cannock would be a good option. Up the fire road for a bit, up Insidious Incline and then down. Around 80m height gain according to Ttrailforks.

111 reps?! 😲

I'd be looking at Welsh / Scottish trail centres where you've got decent amounts of height gain on rideable trails plus the facilities like parking, cafe etc to support it.

39 reps of the short Minton Batch loop @ 35 minutes/lap.

Not sure I've ever done a lap that fast.

Maybe Lordshill descents on Eastridge, need to do around 70ish laps. That may well be doable, very minimal flat but then the climb is on road.

Llandegla gravel Road is a good option as you can everest it properly, not do a loop, not that you're allowed into Wales at the moment anyway.

The hill in the woods near me is also doable as its just shy of 90m gain over about 2km, so 100 repeats

Ok, so Everesting is defined to a very prescriptive, accurate and tedious degree

I can't be bothered with that sort of thing, the simpler a challenge is the better. Surely the only thing you need to 'Everest' is to have done a single ride that took in 8848m of climbing. Easiest done as laps probably but it seems like an unnecessary criteria. If I did any ride with 8848m of climbing I'd be quite content to say I'd Everested even if I didn't make it onto their list. You won't find my name on the Bob Graham completers list because I didn't meet their criteria of being accompanied but I definitely did it!

I reckon the climb in the 'Puffer would be good for an gravel Everest.

You have the forestry carpark suitable for a base, with toilets.

If you just go to the top of the hill past Loch na Crann, it's 139m over 3.2km

So 64 times gets you an Everest.

The bottom parking area is big enough to do an Everesting event.

It would be mind-numbing, but people are daft enough to do the 'Puffer, so... 🙂

can’t be bothered with that sort of thing, the simpler a challenge is the better. Surely the only thing you need to ‘Everest’ is to have done a single ride that took in 8848m of climbing. Easiest done as laps probably but it seems like an unnecessary criteria. If I did any ride with 8848m of climbing I’d be quite content to say I’d Everested even if I didn’t make it onto their list.

Exactly, totally agreed. That's what I'm after.
(with the caveat that I want it to be mtb)

Llandegla gravel Road is a good option as you can everest it properly, not do a loop, not that you’re allowed into Wales at the moment anyway.

Not convinced about this one. (assuming you mean the one parallel to the initial climb)
* It's in Wales, which is closed
* It's not really mtb, it would be far faster on a road bike
* It descends too much to be a good climb
* It's got way too many flat bits, and is too shallow a gradient
* it's also hugely exposed to the wind
* More importantly you can't park a car near it for supply purposes
* Even more importantly they won't let you ride out of hours normal opening hours.

I think Llandegla fire road would necessitate about 440km of riding... 🙁

I can't help you find a route, but my opinion on what makes it a "propoer MTB route" for the purposes of this challenge.

It is possible to ride it all on an MTB, but would not be on a gravel/road bike - the first time round, fatigue and darkness may mean there are a few dabs later on in the challenge.
Descents should all be off road, or if not perfectly possible, more road climbing than road descending.

Recommendation is a fireroad or road climb, followed by some sigletrack/doubletrack descending.
The climb you want to be doing aerobically. Any sort of standing up or climbnig features like step ups and you are going to be going anearobic. Muscles won't last the challenge.
The descent is primarily to get you back to the bottom efficinetly, so you want something you can do at fairly high speed, and not constantly on the brakes.

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Alternative MTB definintion, as I count rides by distance descended, not climbed: 8848m of descending, where all of it is on trails/paths that make a route that could not be done on a road/gravel bike (so a smooth bit in the middle of a trail that also has rocks or jumps on it would be allowed). Climbing can be done by any means, Chairlift, van, helicopter, or god forbid, an ebike.
So 8 circuits round the whistler village gondola; or 11 runs up the funicular and down Black 8 in Bourg St Maurice.

Surely the only thing you need to ‘Everest’ is to have done a single ride that took in 8848m of climbing.

I think it's about the pureness of tackling one 'mountain'. Climbing Everest is about going up (and down), it's not about doing a tour of the Himalayas. The monotony is part of the charm. From an ethos perspective I totally 'get' why it has to be one climb.

I also think technically it's more pure as an out-and-back rather than a loop. With a loop you can use momentum from the down to make the climb easier. That detracts from the purity.

Which is all the reason why it'd be totally awful on an MTB. Whilst I love a good techy climb, there's no trail I know that would be fun going up THAT many times but still be fun on the way down. If you make it too smooth / easy, you might as well use a road bike. It's something I've thought about a fair bit, but don't know if I'd ever put my plans into action.

Fire road up + techy descent is hard enough physically and would be way more enjoyable. Ideally the decent would be shorter / steeper than the climb to minimise the distance & time. That's how I'd do it, to hell with the 'rules'.

Alternatively a more pure interpretation of the rules could be an out and back with the entry criteria 'not doable on a road bike' 😀

The rules of Everesting are what makes it a challenge. It's not just any 8848m it's one climb/descent to make up that elevation. Nothing to stop you doing 8848m of ascent by any means but it ain't Everesting.

If you don't want to play by the rules of the game don't play, simples!

Bloody hell, just looked up the obvious candidate round here, Cam Fell from Gearstones. 36 reps and 19 hours...and probably too gravel bike friendly to count.

11 runs up the funicular and down Black 8 in Bourg St Maurice.

That'd be ace. Think I managed 6 consecutive runs there once. We visited it most evenings we were out there for one or two runs but spent an afternoon on it once. The challenge was always to beat the funicular back down for minimal queuing!

I like ajw's definitions. and Superficial seems to come to a similar conclusion here:

Which is all the reason why it’d be totally awful on an MTB. Whilst I love a good techy climb, there’s no trail I know that would be fun going up THAT many times but still be fun on the way down. If you make it too smooth / easy, you might as well use a road bike. It’s something I’ve thought about a fair bit, but don’t know if I’d ever put my plans into action.

Fire road up + techy descent is hard enough physically and would be way more enjoyable. Ideally the decent would be shorter / steeper than the climb to minimise the distance & time. That’s how I’d do it, to hell with the ‘rules’.

So, we appear to be agreed... for the MTB height challenge, it makes much more sense to have a loop than there and back.

Alternatively a more pure interpretation of the rules could be an out and back with the entry criteria ‘not doable on a road bike’ 😀

Nope, because it would be impossible (IMHO) to find a piece of track that you could repeatedly ascend on an MTB in a state of exhaustion but that couldn't be descended on a road bike.

The rules of Everesting are what makes it a challenge. It’s not just any 8848m it’s one climb/descent to make up that elevation. Nothing to stop you doing 8848m of ascent by any means but it ain’t Everesting.
If you don’t want to play by the rules of the game don’t play, simples!

Ach bollocks. If you don't mind me saying so. I'm not interested in that side of it. And in relation to your second point, I was in fact going to call the whole Operation K2ing rather than Everesting because as we all know K2 is in fact a much more worthy challenge than Everest.
In the end I didn't title the thread K2ing, because it would have confused people and been pretentious as ****.

However, to allay people that keep saying I need to stick to the Everesting rules....

Ok this is a K2ing attempt, not an Everesting attempt:

K2ing The act of completing 8611m of ascent & descent on a mountain bike in a single ride. The descent should be mainly off road and should be something that isn't possible to ride (repeatedly) on a road bike. Ascent can be via a different route, or the same route if you are a riding god.

Martin - is that to the first lot of gates or just to where it meets the PBW?

Nearby is this segment https://www.strava.com/segments/1579855 but it really needs adjusting to start at the beck crossing about 1km into the segment and finish at the gate.

Then there's always the Roman Road - https://www.strava.com/segments/18734795

Cool, so I think we're done. All that remains now is for someone to do it.

ROOOOOOOB
c'mon man. Get your shit together and ride it. The good news is that its now 237m shorter.

🙂

Rule #1 of K2ing - all toys must remain in the pram for the duration of the challenge 😊

busted 🙂

OP is a descendant of William Webb Ellis and I claim £5

Had to google that one.
🙂

What can I say, I've got a new lightweight bike that I want to use (and it isn't very good at proper MTBing so I need to invent a niche for it).
(Actually not that light, and certainly not that new)

Nothing to stop you doing 8848m of ascent by any means but it ain’t Everesting.

By the definition of a commercial organisation...

I think it’s about the pureness of tackling one ‘mountain’

From the generalists link it looks like it's more about selling merchandise. I'm very suspicious of brand specific athletic activities like this appears to be and IM definitely is.

Martin – is that to the first lot of gates or just to where it meets the PBW?

Basically this one, give or take
https://www.strava.com/segments/2383992

Wouldn't want to do the one up from the Bainbridge side since they dumped a load of big gravel on it!

Gayle up to Cam Fell might be a contender now it's been sanitised.

Back on the bike today for the first time post-operation; got to help a buddy do his first SDW single this weekend, then I'll have a bash at this in a fortnights time if the weather plays ball.
I'll do it on the XC Tallboy and am going to stick a Lauf on the front.

Some from up north may say the SDW does not count as mountain biking, and if you can get away with a Lauf, its even less like mountain biking..... I'm just going to do it to see how long it takes.

Well all the best with it. Do post how you got on. I'm so for from anything kike this its not true. maybe Ben Nevising for me

The only thing I'm confused about is why start by posting the Everesting rules then say your not going to follow them?

The only thing I’m confused about is why start by posting the Everesting rules then say your not going to follow them?

Because it was the simplest way of getting engagement with people without having to explain Everesting from scratch in detail.
OK, I realise I linked to the Everest rules page, when I should just have linked to the Everest general info page. my bad

I think it’s about the pureness of tackling one ‘mountain’. Climbing Everest is about going up (and down), it’s not about doing a tour of the Himalayas.

But if climbing the actual Everest then you don't repeatedly go up and down the same bit multiple times, the climb would be novel the whole way up, and novel the whole way down. Therefore doing something like South Downs Way Double with a bit extra on the end would be a purer replacement for doing the actual Everest rather than just sessioning one hill.

(I get that 'The Rules' say differently, and to join their special club you need to follow their rules. If I did a SDW Double then I wouldn't appear on the list, but I'd be happy that I had done an Everest)

I've looked at this before. I've done 7100m climbing/descending in one mtb ride before, done over 8000m on the road, although both were events not repeats of the same per the rules.

I also think for a pure everesting off road you would look for something that is okay to use a road bike up, but not down. The one road I am thinking of I would ride my roadie up if I had to, but coming down would be very slow picking your way through the rougher sections.

There is a segment near me called "The Exponential" which is 0.45km long and has 48m of ascent. The main route up is actually tarmac however it has 3 off-road routes up or down - one on smooth gravel and the other two (at either side of the road) on singletrack. Something like that would be a good option as you could even alter the routes up and down to make it (somewhat) less tedious. It's also very fast to get down if you use the tarmac option.

Of course you would have to ride it a lot of times!

(I get that ‘The Rules’ say differently, therefore if i did a SDW Double then I wouldn’t appear on the list, but I’d be happy that I had done it.)

You're starting to mix challenges. The SDW Double is a challenge in its own right, the climbing is sort of irrelevant because the achievement is the Double. People who do it say they've done the SDW Double, not that they've done 8848+ m climbing in one ride and by the way that ride was the SDW Double.

I mean, it's kind of splitting hairs a bit and largely a pedantic point but this is STW, home of pedantic points!

You could do this one - in Wales on the leg burner at Nant-yr-arian, apparently Gethin went up it 50 odd times on Saturday

[url] https://www.strava.com/activities/3681450010#comments [/url]

K2ing The act of completing 8611m of ascent & descent on a mountain bike in a single ride. The descent should be mainly off road and should be something that isn’t possible to ride (repeatedly) on a road bike. Ascent can be via a different route, or the same route if you are a riding god.

A thumbs up from me. The letter of your law might be challenged by the road bike party videos though (Someone will always find a way to ride inappropriate stuff on a road bike)!

This guy has already done a K2: https://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/other-sports/121646639/kiwi-rider-conquers-everest-by-climbing-more-than-9000m-on-his-mountain-bike
The word 'epic' is overused but that's pretty epic! This would be way harder than a road Everest.

@simondbarnes, I've done 10 on the San Marino, https://strava.app.link/N0B8gdfrJ7

But there is no way I could do another 40+ laps.

That just seems crazy to someone like me.. I looked up Streatley hill, which is road, but 79 times up it !!!! i'm not convinced i could do 3 !!! Let alone the next 76 !!! Wow is all i have to say.

A local to me guy did this segment last year. There's a couple of sections of tarmac (still lose traction going up them if it's slightly wet) but it's mainly gravel.
https://www.strava.com/segments/18185816

Righto, update.....

A colleague from work is keen on this, and as so often happens it's headed off at a tangent. He's keen on the full E tick so we've binned the Cannock option and are heading to Minton Batch for an attempt tomorrow. Feeling somewhat ambivalent, Cannock Lower Cliff loop looked almost doable, with its "free" 20m ascent on the descent, but it wasn't the big E.
But this Minton Batch thing looks way beyond me. In my head I'm thinking 5km is a reasonable effort and 6.6km would be a result. I can't see myself managing the full 9 [thousand] yards!

I'm supposed to be doing it as a sponsored event,but haven't managed to do all the paperwork yet. !

Place your bets on how many [few?] metres I'll manage!

Good luck!

Oof. Rethink needed. I did about 4,400m or 20 laps of Minton Batch. It was seriously hard work. Very little opportunity to sit down on the descent so very draining. The track is lovely though, can see why people love it.
Had to go get a new tyre midway through, which wasted about 90 minutes, then my BB went, but kept going. By midnight it was clearly going to take over thirty hours, and neither of us had that in the tank, not even close. I did a few more laps just to get to 20 whilst he recovered in the car.

With better logistics, ie not having to drive 2.5 hours in the morning, and a much easier route it might be possible, but not on that route. Just too hard ( though I think it's fair to say it is quite an easy route as MTB sections go)
The accomplice did some iron man thing last year for which the run was Scafell Pike Marathon and the cycle was the Fred Whitton, and he was nowhere near this one either... So I'm not feeling despondent. It was just way too hard

Hmmmmmm

Over to you Rob... Good luck.