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Greg Hill
Backcountry.com sponsored athlete -
You could say Greg Hill is a numbers guy. The Canadian ski mountaineer has clocked 50,000 feet of vertical in 24 hours, 80 10,000-foot days in one season, a million vertical feet in one season, and skied the 21 summits of the Monashee Mountains in 21 days. Now, using his multiplication skills and mind-boggling aerobic endurance, Hill is in the midst of an attempt to climb and ski two million vertical feet in a calendar year, averaging 5,500 feet a day, every day. For you visual learners, that's the equivalent of 36 trips up and down Mt. Everest. Greg will document his quest (read: have to haul a five-pound HD camera) with blog updates and video trip reports as he travels between hemispheres with the winter, seeking two million feet worth of steep skin tracks and deep pow turns.
Recent Adventures
News Feed
It’s the Greg Hill 2 Mil — presented by Backcountry.com. Canadian ski mountaineer Greg Hill is in the middle of his year-long effort to climb two million vertical feet and ski back down. And he’s doing it on steep, powder-covered mountain faces from Alaska to Chile and lots of high points in between.
His feat is what some would call insane. Or impossible. Powering up two million feet is the equivalent of climbing Mt. Everest five times a month for a year. It’s like scaling each of the seven summits, then starting over again, until you’ve done it 14 times. For the city bound, it’s like taking the stairs to the top of the Empire State Building four times a day, every day, for a year, or more than 200 marathons in the year, all through hazardous mountain terrain.
As if the sheer physical pace and strain on his body, mind, and gear isn’t daunting enough, Greg will need to address variable and dangerous snow conditions, foreign cultures and mountain ranges, and the nutritional and hydration challenges associated with living a backcountry wilderness existence.
The quest thus far has taken Greg throughout the Selkirks in B.C. and the Brooks Range in Alaska. He now finds himself, and his family, camped out in the backwoods of South America — specifically Las Trancas, Chile where he, his wife and two small children, will spend the remainder of the summer exploring, hiking and skiing the numerous unnamed peaks.
There are many points of tension in this real-life saga. How will his body hold up? His mind? His gear? His family life? To date, they are all holding up well. Greg has just crossed the 1 million vertical feet threshold. On schedule. But now, the hard part starts, as the wear-and-tear of 8 months in the backcountry plus the anticipation of success drive him forward and deeper into the mountains.
What’s next? Stay tuned as Greg closes in on a historical accomplishment and a record for the ages.
Greg Hill 2 Mil Community Page;
http://www.backcountry.com/greghill2mil
http://twitter.com/GregHill2Mil
About Backcountry.com:
Backcountry.com is an online retailer of high-end outdoor gear. The e-tailer carries more than 400 brands in various categories, including backpacking, camping, cycling, hiking, climbing, trail running, paddling, skiing, snowboarding, snowshoeing and adventure travel. Backcountry also operates Bonktown.com, Chainlove.com, SteepandCheap.com, Dogfunk.com, Tramdock.com, WhiskeyMilitia.com, Departmentofgoods.com, Realcyclist.com, Hucknroll.com, and Brociety.com. Backcountry.com is a controlled subsidiary of Liberty Media Corporation attributed to the Liberty Interactive Group (Nasdaq: LINTA).
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