Metres Climbed Per Year

Hello I am due next week WX permitting to activate summit number 300 since I started SOTA in 2012.
Got me wondering how many metres gain I have hiked doing this activity/obsession.
A rough calculation from the 46 summits I activated for year 2018 I hiked from a parking spot somewhere below the summit for 28 of them the rest I could drive close to the activation zone so did not count the drive ups as much of a hike.
Just a rough calculation from the parking spots to summits I hiked 6270 m up hill with 8 kg on my back. Its a bit hard to calculate all the other years as I did less or more summits every year. That must be equivalent to a couple Everest 8,848m over 7.5 years of SOTA. Good thing is except for a pace maker required last year my old body is still in reasonable nick to keep going a bit longer yet. I wonder If anyone else has worked out how many vertical metres they have hiked for SOTA.
Regards
Ian vk5cz …

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Good effort Ian! It would take me a bit of work to add up my cumulative vertical ascent. I should do it one winter’s day.

Another interesting metric is the maximum height you’ve climbed from the trail head to the summit. For me, that’s VK3/VE-001 Mt Bogong via the Staircase Trail, a linear distance of about 6 km but a vertical ascent of over 1,400m. That one is worth training for.

73 and enjoy your 300th. And thanks for the recent chases. Paul VK3HN.

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G day Paul. I guess I am lucky here in vk5 the summits are not really that high asl compared to other associations. It was a question someone asked me the other day so being a rainy day had a go at working it out.
VK5/NE-010 is about 6km to hike but only 580m of gain from where I park the SOTA Transporter,and its 5m short of being a 10 pointer. That will be my summit 300 next Wednesday if WX is ok.
Regards
Ian vk5cz …

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Ian

As part of my book project I kept track of all the stats. I stopped keeping track after 116 activations (Oct 18 2018 to October 23, 2019 - just about 1 year), now I am up to 126 activations, so I will continue the tally at some point. At the 116 activation point I had climbed 20885 meters or about 2.36 Everests. I have also hiked 458 km. I did not count any drive-up summits. I did just bicycle the highest peak in the eastern half of the United States from the base (leg power only) which was a 550m climb over a roadway that was 7.6 km long. The average power at the cranks was 243 watts over a time of 43 minutes.

Ariel NY4G

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Good work Ariel. I found after a few summit hikes and dealing with the pain that it was the cycling I was doing a few days before the activation’s that made me so sore when trying to hike. These days I usually stop riding my bike a couple days before I do SOTA and take the dogs for a walk instead as a taper off from training. I really wonder and admire how Triathletes jump off their bikes after X kms and then straight into Running, that must hurt. Well done on cycling to a summit I have only tried it once and found my back pack was very painful on my “sitting” position on the bike and ended up pushing the bike plus my back pack to the top. Did a tour on my bike to 3 summits with BoB trailer but hiked the summits and parked the bike and trailer, that was ok at the time.
Ian vk5cz …