AGAINST BETTER JUDGEMENT
August 12, 2026
8851 meters. 31 hours. 28 laps. 126km. 17 hours of darkness. And snow or rain the entire time.
There sure are easier ways to Everest. Smooth climbs, mid-summer weather, daylight saving time. Most stack the odds in their favour, and rightfully so. It’s a huge effort at the best of times.
Not this time though.
“I just really like riding my bike, so I wanted to prove to myself that no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t have a shitty bike ride.”
The original plan looked almost reasonable. Twenty-three laps. Around a day on the bike. Finish sometime after sunrise the following day, and do it as close to the shortest day as possible. Instead, it became twenty-seven laps, 126 kilometres, thirty-one hours, seventeen hours in darkness, freezing rain, fresh snow, numb feet, hallucinations, and enough small problems to end the ride early a dozen times over.
It all kicked off at 7:57 AM on December 18th, 2025. It was grim from the get-go. By the second lap, the feet were already numb, and the shoes soaked through. Every few laps became a routine of peeling off wet socks, pulling on whatever dry gloves were left, eating whatever sounded remotely edible, and heading straight back up the hill for another lap.
“First off, Elliot dropped a casual 10 laps with me at the beginning of the ride, from 8 AM until about 6 PM, doing a 3200 meter ride like it was a Sunday stroll. Those 10 laps felt like absolute butter for both of us. They also added up to the highest elevation ride I had ever done already. After Elliot clocked out, Spencer and Elijah came for some of the first night laps with the lighting setups. These boys definitely encouraged sending your life in the dark and kept those 5 or so laps exciting.”
“Then the 2:30 AM lap hit. I was shattered. I think it was my 17th lap, meaning I had 10 more laps to go – I’d done the math by this point. I fell asleep on my bike on the way up and rode into the ditch only to wake up lying in basically a mud pit with my bike beside me. I did this 2 more times over the next 2 laps. I was talking to myself the whole time and was hallucinating visuals of my friends in the woods pretty much every 5 seconds. The Red Bull wasn’t working. The only thing that worked was seeing the sign at the top of the trail, which instantly got me so excited to ride my bike down the hill. Riding down was no problem, as your brain always finds a way to turn itself back on. By this time, my ass was so sore, and considering this was my first time ever wearing a chamois, I was getting some unique chafing in some questionable spots. I also decided to apply chamois butter for the first time, and what followed was excruciating stinging in a very nerve-dense area. Everyone told me it wasn’t supposed to feel like that.”
There wasn’t much science behind the ride. In fact, there was almost none. The original planned twenty-three laps became twenty-seven because the elevation calculations were wrong. The nutrition plan was shaky at best. The route wasn’t even finalized until the night before.
“After talking with a buddy who had done an Everest before, he basically told me to go to the grocery store and grab the widest selection of things you might have remote interest in throughout the ride, as the hardest part is finding stuff that your body is actually interested in eating by the time you’re 24 hours deep. I had a rough plan, but every time I saw the cinnamon buns and Oreos, that was what I went for.”
“The ride ended up being twenty-seven laps vs the estimated twenty-three. This was because the one test Strava lap I did a week earlier, I recorded the elevation from completely the wrong drop-in. What is hilarious is that I didn’t actually know what tracks I was going to ride until the night before, when I finally settled on my two favourites: Bubonic and Lower Wolfgang. What was most important for me wasn’t that the tracks were easy and more sustainable, or smoother for the hands… it was that I was excited to drop into the trails to have some fun on the best trails ever. Halfway up every lap, my motivation to get to the top was that I had some of the most fun riding anyone can ask for at my fingertips.”
“The physical difficulty was a good test. I knew I was fit, but I was still nervous having done very little training for the ride. I was able to push my body and legs pretty hard though with almost no issues. The mental side of things was another story, and I think it would be a similar story for everyone. I couldn’t have done anywhere close to this ride without my friends keeping the hype up and doing laps with me throughout the ride and keeping me going.”
But why mid-winter? There isn’t a prize waiting at the top. Life doesn’t change because a GPS file says you climbed the height of Everest. By every logical measure, it was a stupid idea.
The questions remain. Why spend thirty-one hours riding in freezing weather? Why deliberately make it harder? Why stack every bad variable against yourself? Maybe there isn’t an answer. Maybe as humans, we have always gone looking for uncomfortable things simply because they reveal parts of ourselves that ordinary days never will. A massive thank you to all those involved and helped make this project happen.
Support Crew: Elliot Jamieson, Spencer Young, Elijah Barron, Oakley Savisburg, Max McCulloch, Liam Morgan, Sean Bourquin
Supporting Brands: 7Mesh, Akta, Title, Occam, Crankbrothers, Full On Lighting, Cowichan Cycles, Comox Valley Toyota
Video Production & Editing: Nodding Onion Studios – Max McCulloch & Liam Morgan
Photography: Jake Paddon
Narrator: Chris Case