As if thru hiking itself isn’t enough of an adventure, thru hikers have come up with a different array of “challenges” to make the experience more exciting. One of the most popular ones is the half gallon challenge on the AT. Pretty self-explanatory, eat a half gallon of ice cream at the half-way point.

Some other challenges are a bit more creative:

• 24/24/24 challenge- drink 24 beers while hiking 24 miles all within 24 hours

• 4-state challenge on the AT- hiking the ~44 miles through Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, and into Pennsylvania within 24 hours

This challenge was simple enough. See how many miles you can hike in 24 hours. I am not sure who started this masochistic challenge, but the brain child who presented it to our group was our tramiliy member, Jedi. He had participated in this challenge during his 2021 PCT thru hike.

Jedi and I (Speedgoat) have an ongoing rivalry- who can hike the fastest. Obviously, the person who’s trail name has ‘Speed’ in it. I was fueled by this friendly competition and spent almost as much time planning out this challenge than I did on preparing for the PCT! Of course I had to drag Riveter into it. Up until this point, I had been trying to convince Riveter to run a 100-mile Ultra race with me following the PCT (I have yet to convince her). The closest thing I could get her to agree to was a 24-hour challenge with a goal to hike 100k or 62 miles. I’ll take it! 

We were picky about where to attempt this challenge. It had to be sandwiched between towns so we didn’t have to carry too much food and the flatter the better. Oregon fit the flat requirement and thus our spot was chosen! We would start our challenge at mile 1931.6- allowing us to end near Bend, Oregon where we would take a double zero to recover.

After months of anticipation, the day finally arrived for the challenge! Our alarm clocks went off at 2 am giving us an hour to pack-up before starting our hike at 3 am. The early wake-up call was yet again, another self-inflicted choice. Riveter led the pack, followed by myself, Jinx, and Jedi. For entertainment we retold podcast stories we had listened to.

Our family had mailed us notecards with ‘words of encouragement’ to keep morale up. Riveter would read two notecards every hour. Our favorite was a quote our mom had picked out, and was coincidentally the first quote, reading something along the lines of “you will always be in the same place no matter how fast you hike, you are always in the woods”. Our interpretation of this quote: Just give up now. At 5am, a few hours in and still far from 62 miles we found this quote pretty funny.

Riveter took short videos at the top of every hour to show the progression of pain. We fueled ourselves with candy, beef jerky sticks, marshmallows, iced coffee, and ibuprofen. It turns out eating candy as your primary calorie source is not sustainable for a whole day of hiking… says the Dietitian.

We split into our sibling pairs just after lunch, Riveter and I taking the lead. I anticipated we would be loopy with exhaustion at this point and would not be paying attention to the trail. This was completely the opposite.

We were energized by the breathtaking (& flat) meadows within the 3-sister wilderness. The energy was needed as the meadows turned into rolling fields of red volcanic lava rock. The lava rock would have been a lot prettier if it weren’t so hard to hike on. Imagine trying to walk on golf balls uphill. You get the picture.

We had the pleasure of hiking sections of lava rock for the last 15 miles of the challenge. And in the dark. Riveter’s hiking turned into skiing at this point. She nearly took both of us out on several occasions, skidding across the rock until she was able to stop herself with trekking poles. Thankfully neither of us were injured due to this section.

Our injuries on this day were completely unexpected. When we stopped at our last water source around dinner time (not that we had anything appropriate for dinner. Riveter had about 12 AirHeads) I had a raging heat rash across my ankles. I wasted precious minutes soaking my feet to cool them down and even taking off my gaiters for the rest of the day. In case you were wondering, it was not even hot! At this same water source we were bundling up in our puffies and wind pants.

Thankfully we hit solid ground by the last 4 miles! This was close to 11pm and the exhaustion was setting in at this point. The only thing I remember about the last hour or so was that it was cold, dark, and I was afraid a bear was going to attack us. I underestimated how much of an effect the dark would have on our mood. Setting off in the morning we knew that we had about 3-4 hours without light, but at night there was no reprieve to look forward to. It felt isolating and suffocating even with two of us being there. The darkness was the second mostly challenging aspect of the day, after the lava rock.

After 20.5 hours, 8,150 ft ascent and 8,166 ft descent, we FINALLY hit 100k. While we technically had 3.5 hours left in our 24-hour challenge we were ready to call it a night. Our new challenge was finding a tenting site. Easier said than done in the pitch black while hiking down a ridge.

Riveter was ready to be out of the cold, even if that meant pitching the tent on slanted spots. I nixed all of her tenting suggestions, urging us to hike a little further to find a ‘flatter’ spot. I swear Riveter was ready to pitch the tent on the trail at this point.

We made it another o.5 mile up the trail before finding a spot that we both agreed on. It was our fastest pitch ever. We crawled into the tent, took our final dose of ibuprofen, and fell asleep. For those of you who are wondering- we did beat Jedi in this challenge.

Interested in seeing the 24-Hour Challenge in Action?

Check out our YouTube short here.

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