FKT: David Ashley - US State Highpoints - 2023-06-30

Team National Kidney Registry consisted of 5 living kidney donors and one videographer.  The goal was for three climbing team members and two support crew to visit all 50 state high points and summit them, with a goal of beating the currently published Guinness World Record of roughly 43 days.  We were approved by Guinness to challenge their current record.

During the challenge two of the three climbing team members dropped out.  However one, Dave Ashley, finished summiting all of the 50 state high points in just over 41 days.

Please see the two attached GPX files.  The first shows Dave's Garmin InReach which was intended to be on only when Dave was climbing...but sometimes it was forgotten and left on while we drove to the next high point.  It was set to 10 minute tracking interval, so it does not always show his location on each summit.  And it was not turned on for Kansas by accident (but we have a photo to verify he visited it!)  Then see the 2nd file, this is our support crew that drove Dave around the lower 48 states.  Also set to 10 minute tracking.  This also shows that Dave visited each high point trailhead.  Next see our Facebook page where we have posted pictures of every summit.  Then see Dave's personal Strava page where you can verify he stood on every summit during this time period.  This has the shortest tracking interval and is best for verifying each high point peak.  Note some maps don't correctly show a mountain summit, but again we have photo verification that Dave was on the highest point for each peak with things like summit markers and log books, and often there were other climbers to verify that.

Note we had poor weather and snow conditions out West, and we skipped some climbs initially and Montana's Granite Peak was not correctly summited the first time.  So we had to change our planned finish in Maine, flew out to LA, and climbed Whitney (California), Hood (Oregon), Borah (Idaho), Granite (Montana for the 2nd time), and Gannett (Wyoming) out of our original planned order. So the GPX tracks overlap a bit out West, that's why as we had to drive through the area twice and Dave climbed Montana's Granite twice.

We are using the Guinness rules for this event for timing, which start the clock when departing the first trailhead (Denali Base Camp) and stop the clock once we reach the final summit.  We do have GPX data to support stopping the clock once back to the car after the final summit, which isn't the current standard for this FKT with Guinness but better mirrors what other multi-peak FKTs do like the Colorado 14ers.  We are open to either total time.  We don't agree with starting the clock from the first summit (Denali) as this eliminates the climbing time for that mountain, and isn't standard for other multi mountain climbs like the Colorado 14ers and the 7 Summits.