Lachlan Morton breaks Everesting record (for real this time) in 7:29:57

Published June 20, 2020 09:09PM

UPDATED WITH OFFICIAL TIME.

EF Pro Cycling’s Lachlan Morton has broken the Everesting record, setting a time of 7 hours, 29 minutes and 57 seconds, less than a week after his previous attempt was nullified due to bad elevation data.

Hells 500, the body behind Everesting, has confirmed the official time.

Morton made his second attempt on the same climb as his first attempt, the backside of Rist Canyon outside Fort Collins, CO, but used a slightly different, and slightly shorter, Strava segment. He completed the required climbing roughly ten minutes faster than the previous record, held by Keegan Swenson at 7 hours, 40 minutes and 5 seconds.

Morton’s previous attempt, last weekend, had to be scrapped from the record books after it was determined that the elevation gain provided by Strava was not accurate. CyclingTips independently verified that Morton was 2.3 laps short of 8,848 meters, which, even if he’d reached the elevation target, would have put him behind Swenson’s record.

Ahead of Morton’s second attempt, Hells 500 verified the new segment using highly accurate LiDAR data and expertise from the co-founder of OpenTopography, Chris Crosby. Strava marks the segment as gaining 189 m, but the data show it actually gains 190 m per lap, which means Morton needed 46.57 laps to hit the height of Everest.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, after his first attempt was removed, Morton rode an extra lap just to be absolutely sure he hit the 8,848 m mark.

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Everesting Features Lachlan Morton

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