Red Bull and dual Olympic athlete Courtney Atkinson embarked on the latest attempt to break the record for scaling the highest peak in each of Australia’s eight States and Territories (the State8).
Despite more than twenty years of racing under his belt, including two Olympic Games, triathlons and adventure racing, Atkinson admits that the biggest challenge is likely to be the logistics of actually getting to each mountain rather than the time required to scale each.
“If I don’t manage to break the overall record (currently 5.5 days), I will attempt to set individual benchmarks for ascending and descending each individual peak” he said.
Apart from Kosciuszko, Atkinson has not climbed any of the peaks before and will attempt all summits alone during daylight hours.
Wild takes a keen interest in the challenge, with the magazine’s new publisher, Roland Handel having himself scaled seven of the eight peaks (blogged at state8.net).
In the last few years both the Sum8 team and Kyle Williams have taken on the State8 challenge, recording times of six days, 21 hours and 30 minutes, and five days 22 hours and 35 minutes respectively.
You can follow Atkinson’s attempt on the State8 via the Red Bull website.