Sunday 3rd March 2024 – 4am local time (10am NZT)
Live tracking
Leave me a message of support – I’ll have my phone with me during the climb
UPDATE 2/3 – It’s HOT! Even locals are saying it’s hot. Managing hydration and electrolyte intake will be essential tomorrow. There’s also an issue with the road closing @ 8pm each night and the checkpoint guards apparently being pretty strict. I’ll need to be close to the 16hr goal time for it to work without taking a pause for the road to reopen.
The aim
- 7 (and a bit) ascents of 17.5km climb
- 250+km ridden
- 8,848m vertical gain
- 16-18 hours
The bike
- Surly ECR incl steel racks
- Vittoria Mezcal 29×2.6 tyres
- Rohloff Hub gearing (34×16)
- Son dynamo with K-Lite lighting
- Brooks Cambium saddle
- Ergon GP5 grips
- NO PANNIER BAGS!!
- Approx 21kgs
The details
Live Tracking
Updates every few minutes. It will be working – but you’ll need to zoom in sorry.
(Rach) … and he’s off! Official start time of 3:57am. Road not open to cars for another hour but plenty of street dogs around to keep Tom company 🐶
(Rach, 8:01am) the snackmobile waiting for Tom at the bottom of his 2nd lap!
8:17am
Picked up some riding buddies
reaching the top for the 3rd time
the sun is really beating down now 🥵🥵
Final Update – 12:35pm
I’ve pulled the pin at the halfway mark (Basecamp). 4,502m vertical metres gained over 126km. Just too hot to see any benefit in continuing. Coming into the heat of the day, knowing I had another 3x repeats with the sun on my back before it cooled off was just too much. I’ll settle with the (currently unofficial) fastest Everest Basecamp time in Thailand – for now.
Even though the repeats had slowed down, timing was still on-track to make the 8pm road closure, but I couldn’t see the point in risking cooking myself for essentially a silly personal challenge.
Thank you to everyone who sent words of support, rode with me on the climb, offered me gels or just believed I could get it done. It was all very much appreciated and I’m sorry to disappoint, but I’ll now be leaving the awesome city of Chiang Mai with unfinished business…
Oh, one more thing… A huge shout-out to Rach for all her support – from booting me out of bed before the roosters, to mixing unfathomable quantities of 7-eleven electrolyte sachets and also helping in the days leading up to it too. I couldn’t have gotten even half as far without you x
Really? It’s madness! What local support? Incredibly steep descents when heavily fatigued.
Animals in darkness! Isn’t there a beach somewhere?
No “really steep” bits on this climb, it’s mostly quite fast and flowing. Bombed down it hard on a rental scooter the other day just to check 😉
Support from Rach and a Chiang Mai riders group! No tigers or bears thankfully – we’ve already made it through their patch…
Beaches come after x
Go well Tom.
Sounds fun, probably the first time an ECR will ever do an Everesting!
Cheers Brook!
It’s definitely a bike not built for the job!
Hi Tom .. just received this link called “madness”, I thought after viewing your “holiday” posts you were actually “on” holiday but I guess doing a “Everesting” can be added to the holiday heading 😉
Best wishes and hope your Surly can keep up with you on your challenge today 😊🤞👌
Haha, cheers John.
If you’d seen the number of empty Chang cans that follow me around – you’d realise the ‘holiday’ is well underway 😅
Smash it bro!
Or it’ll smash me. Either way really haha
You are a mad man Tom, but you know that. Have fun and enjoy the plush feeling of plus size tyres 😂.
Coming from another ‘Everester’ I’ll take that as a compliment 😅
They’ll be pumped hard as rock… It’s a wicked fast wide open descent 🤘😁
Go get it Tom!
Pace yourself and keep the spirits high
Cheers Nichole, pacing and hydration will be absolutely key!
It’s Thailand – how can the spirits not be high 😅
Good luck today Tom! 🍀
You’ve got this Tom! It is do great to see you doing what you do best!
One done! Weather seems good at the moment 👍🏼👍🏼
Going well !! Awesome to see that support.