Forgive her for losing her voice—last weekend, Anna Frost ran for two and a half days straight. Besides a case of laryngitis, she also can’t seem to stay awake for more than 30 minutes at a time. Those are the worst things to come out of an extraordinary mountain adventure that concluded August 18.
Frost, a New Zealand trail runner who won this year’s Hardrock 100, teamed with Colorado’s Missy Gosney to become the first women to finish Nolan’s 14, climbing 14 peaks of 14,000 feet over 100 miles. They started at Mount Massive near Leadville, Colorado, and finished at Mount Shavano, near Salida. In the loose world of Fastest Known Times, rules allow that the challenging route—and its 44,000 feet of elevation gain—must be completed in less than 60 hours.
Topping out on 14,229-foot Mount Shavano after 57 hours and 55 minutes, the two women were just the 12th and 13th finishers to ever traverse the elusive, but increasingly popular route.
“It is a beautiful line that captivated me,” Frost said. “It was new and exciting, it required a lot of time and personal research to learn the course and find the best way.”
Even before each of the duo competed at Colorado’s Hardrock 100 in July, where Frost was first and Gosney fourth, they’d been scheming of a Nolan’s push together. Since Hardrock, each had been focused on this challenge.
The obstacles were numerous. The largely off-trail course includes technical sections, route-finding difficulties, dangerous weather, and high-altitude complications.
“Each and every summit had its own moments, some with lightning, some at night, some in sun or rain. [Mount] Princeton took us the longest and we were both really struggling in the strong, cold winds. We thought of bailing off Princeton many times,” Frost said. “But, we kept each other trucking on.”
The daunting climbs and descents humble even the fastest ultrarunners. “There is not much running in Nolan’s. The downhills turn into shuffles and the flats into power hikes,” Frost said.
Adding to those challenges, the sheer amount of time involved is incredible. “My hallucinations got pretty wild nearing the top of Princeton,” Frost said of the 11th summit, on their north-to-south path. “I just kept telling Missy about them and just acknowledged the fact that I was seeing things. It could get scary if you didn’t accept it, but we had fun with it.”
While fun, Frost and Gosney—who Frost called “an incredible rock with power from start to finish”—pinky promised at the finish not to repeat the task. “Onto new mountains, places, seas, and adventures,” she said.
Despite some controversy on where the challenge officially ended with a 60-hour cutoff—either on the last peak or at the trailhead down from the summit—Frost and Gosney are still being celebrated as the first women on a short list of finishers.
Frost said the goal was never to be the first females, but to complete the experience. “It was just about us getting this challenge done as the people we are,” she said. “However, it is awesome to empower women as we go.”
