25 miles. Eight summits. 10,000 feet of elevation gain. 16 hours of hiking. Three hours of sleep. As I survey my map and realize that I still have one summit and 10 miles to go, with less than three hours of daylight left, I concede that this day is rapidly turning in to an arithmetic problem from hell. My six companions have already resumed the merciless up and downs of the trail, racing the sun for our elusive eighth and final summit.

As I watch Julia’s ponytail bob into the distance, I wonder aloud if the person who said that you have to crawl before you begin to walk ever imagined the reverse happening to some one. Groaning, I leave my comfy perch on a boulder and resume my trudging, promising myself that I won’t start crawling just yet.

My day had started 13 hours earlier, at a time when the best Cornellians are just turning in / stumbling home for the night. There is nothing in the world quite like waking up at 4 a.m. to go for a hike, especially when I had gone to bed a mere three hours earlier. Normally, nothing short of an impending avalanche would convince me to rise a good two hours before the sun did, but today I had a resolute goal: to complete the Great Range Traverse in under 24 hours.

The GRT encompasses an entire range of mountains in the Adirondacks, tagging seven peaks that rise more than 4,000 feet above sea level, and culminating on Mt. Marcy, New York’s highest point and well over 5,000 feet above sea level. Most mortals (myself included) would normally tackle Lower and Upper Wolfjaw, Armstrong, Gothics, Saddleback, Basin, Haystack and Marcy over the course of a long weekend, dividing up the range in to manageable sections of two or three mountains a day.

Immortals and fools alike, however, occasionally attempt to bag the whole thing is a single swoop. Backpacker Magazine rated this objective the third hardest day hike in America back in 2005, and for good reason. The ordeal takes a lot of planning and even more endurance, as the entire range spans more than 25 miles and lacks reliable water sources for much of the way. You need to have enough food, water and energy to get from end to end, plus a way to get yourself back to your starting point, hopefully without requiring further use of your legs.

I always envisioned a personal expedition involving a potent mixture of equal parts unstoppable endurance, careful preparation and perfect weather. On Saturday, September 12, however, I started my expedition with none of the above.

Poor route-finding, heavy cloud cover and a general lack of personal fitness ensured that my Great Range Traverse was one of the hardest days of my life. While the trail itself lacked the impressive knife blade ridges promised by Backpacker, I often times found myself balancing over the steep drop-offs separating sheer exhaustion and sweet exhilaration. Climbing eight mountains is a day with barely any views is a hard pill to swallow, but I choked it down with a mixture of iodine water, Snickers bars and ceaseless inspiration from some good friends.

Despite the difficulties, pushing myself to my physical and mental limits was an incredibly rewarding experience. Doing it as part of a group make the journey even more special, because I had someone else to share my (literal!) up and downs with along the way. Gearing up for the final assault on Marcy, illuminated by the slowly sinking sun, is a moment I won’t ever forget. That, and the incomparable feeling of seeing Julia’s car gradually emerge from the darkness, 16 hours and three blisters later. At least I didn’t have to crawl to get there.