Bucket List · Bucket list route
Everesting
Pick a hill. Any hill. Run up and down it until you have climbed the height of Everest. No sleeping. One activity. The idea came from cycling and the running version is, if anything, worse.
- Elevation
- 8,848 m29,029 ft
- Rules
- One hill, one activity
- Sleep
- Not allowed
- Typical run time
- 20 to 40 hours
- Verification
- GPS via Strava
- Cost
- Free, plus a lot of snacks
Everesting is beautifully stupid and completely democratic: there is no entry, no venue, and no gatekeeper. The only rule that matters is 8,848 metres of vertical gain on a single hill in a single activity. Everything else is your problem.
The hill choice determines everything. A steep hill means fewer repeats but more punishing descents. A shallow hill means gentler legs but far more distance and far more time. Hells 500, which created and administers the challenge, maintains discipline-specific rulesets including a Run/Hike category, which permits shuttled or non-shuttled descents depending on the variant you're claiming.
How to get in
- Self-supportedDo it, record it, submit it
Choose your hill, record the whole thing with GPS as a single activity, don't sleep, upload to Strava, and submit for verification. Short breaks are allowed. Rules are updated over time, so read the current ruleset on the official site rather than a blog post, particularly for the running and hiking variants.
Choosing the hill
- Do the maths first. 8,848 metres divided by your hill's gain equals your repeat count. Then multiply the round-trip distance. A 100 metre hill means 88 repeats.
- Aim for a gradient you can run down comfortably for twenty-plus hours. Steeper is fewer repeats but the eccentric damage compounds viciously.
- Somewhere close to home, and safe at night. You'll be there in the dark, alone, at hour 26, and being 200 metres from a bathroom and a resupply matters more than the scenery.
- Shade and water. One hill for a day and a half means the sun tracks across you the whole time.
- Have a crew or a base. A car boot with food, dry socks, and a chair turns a miserable attempt into a manageable one.
The related challenges
- Half Everesting: 4,424 metres. A genuinely respectable day and a good rehearsal.
- Basecamp: 5,364 metres, the height of Everest Base Camp.
- Double and triple Everesting: exist, and the people who do them are not well.
- Vertical Kilometre: 1,000 metres of gain, the classic short version, and a real racing discipline in the Alps.
Questions runners actually ask
What are the official Everesting rules?
Climb 8,848 metres of elevation gain on a single hill, in one activity, without sleeping. Short breaks are allowed. It must be recorded by GPS, uploaded to Strava, and submitted to the Everesting site for verification. Run and hike categories have their own specific rules.
How long does a running Everesting take?
Typically twenty to forty hours depending on the hill and the runner. Hill choice affects total time more than fitness does.
Can I shuttle the descents?
The Run/Hike category has variants that allow shuttled descents, recorded separately from non-shuttled attempts. Check the current official ruleset before you plan your attempt.
Go to the source
Entry rules, dates, standards, fees, and odds change every single year, and the interesting races change them the most. Use this guide to build the plan; use the official site to confirm the details before you book anything.
If this is your kind of thing
Need the races in between? The hard part of a bucket list year is everything else on the calendar: the qualifier, the tune-up, the long run with a bib on.