I completed Holy Nolan's by traversing all 15 14ers in the Sawatch range on foot. I started northbound from Blanks Gulch Trailhead at 6:30:00 AM on Saturday. I met my dad at roughly 7 points along the way to pick up food/water and charge batteries. I also resupplied and spent the night along Horn Fork Trail with a friend who had backpacked in. Besides this, I ran/hiked alone for the entire time, with no pacers or navigational assistance. I stopped to sleep for roughly 5.5 hours on the first night and 4.5 hours on the second night. I reached the Leadville Fish Hatchery at 2:55:05 PM on Monday for a Nolan's 14 finish time of 55:55:05. I then continued on to summit Holy Cross early Tuesday morning, and finished at Half Moon Trailhead at 4:17:25 AM for a Holy Nolan's FKT of 69:47:25.
The conditions were great for October with nice temperatures, dry weather, and minimal snow. There was occasional wildfire smoke blowing in from Utah, but it luckily didn't affect breathing much. Sleeping for around 8 hours meant minimal sleep deprivation and fast moving for the first 14 peaks, but then the way to Holy Cross had more suffering than the rest of the peaks combined, mainly due to extremely beat-up quads. Still, adding on this 15th and final Sawatch 14er feels like an obvious aesthetic choice for this route, and I'm surprised it's not much more popular to do so. A faster ultra runner working on less sleep could absolutely take many hours off this record; I think it could probably even go sub-60 in the future!
Here is the 14ers.com forum post discussing the attempt: https://www.14ers.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=64339
I will have a more detailed trip report available here soon: https://www.14ers.com/php14ers/tripreport.php?trip=22871
Here are my full splits:
- 6:30 AM - (Blanks Gulch Trailhead)
- 8:31 AM - Mount Shavano
- 9:03 AM - Tabeguache Peak
- 11:21 AM - Mount Antero
- 4:10 PM - Mount Princeton
- 10:28 PM - Mount Yale
- 12:34 AM - (Stop at Horn Fork Trail)
- 6:06 AM - (Start at Horn Fork Trail)
- 7:53 AM - Mount Columbia
- 9:52 AM - Mount Harvard
- 12:37 PM - Mount Oxford
- 1:17 PM - Mount Belford
- 2:32 PM - Missouri Mountain
- 5:28 PM - Huron Peak
- 9:57 PM - La Plata Peak
- 12:23 AM - (Stop at Echo Canyon Trailhead)
- 5:02 AM - (Start at Echo Canyon Trailhead)
- 7:58 AM - Mount Elbert
- 11:59 AM - Mount Massive
- 2:25 PM - (Leadville Fish Hatchery)
- 1:13 AM - Mount of the Holy Cross
- 4:17 AM - (Half Moon Trailhead)