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On Thursday, September 19, 2024 at 03:30am local time, La Sportiva pro runner and mountaineer Tyler Andrews (or just “Ty”, as he’s known to many) left Manaslu Base Camp. 9 hours and 53 minutes later, he stood on the summit and made a tearful call to his parents, halfway around the world, to let them know that he had just smashed the world record for fastest ascent of the 8163m peak by more than two hours.

Ty has been turning heads in the speed climbing, trail running, and ultra-marathoning worlds for more than a decade. After qualifying for four US National Championship teams and running in two US Olympic Trials, he found his niche in high-altitude trail running and mountaineering. Having set world records on Aconcagua and Kilimanjaro in 2023, he joined the La Sportiva team in 2024 with huge goals in the Himalaya.

We caught up with Ty once he’d gotten back to Base Camp and had gotten a few good nights’ sleep.

Read the official press release here.

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Congrats on the new record! Tell us about Mt. Manaslu and how this project came to be.

Manaslu is the 8th highest mountain in the world at 8163m and sits in Nepal in the western Himalaya. It’s often climbed in the autumn (for a variety of reasons) and serves as a good “introductory” 8000m peak. It was my first attempt at an 8000m peak last year (2023), where I’d planned to go for both an attempt at the summit and speed record without supplemental oxygen 

(Aside: Nowadays, almost all climbers use supplemental oxygen on peaks over 8000m. This additional oxygen does not make it easy, or like breathing at sea level, but it does reduce the effective altitude by about 2000m, rendering a peak like Manaslu more like a 6000m peak vs. an 8000m peak. This makes a huge difference. So for me, climbing without “gas” is one of the most important parts of the challenge.)

The speed record starts at Base Camp at an altitude of 4850m and goes to the summit at 8163m over the course of about 14 km (9 miles). As of 2022, the record was held by Francois  Cazanelli at 13 hours and then last year (2023), when I failed to break the record, it was broken by Pemba Gelje Sherpa of Nepal, in a time of 12 hours exactly. 

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What happened last year? What did you do differently this year?

Gosh, a lot went wrong last year! First off, I had a very bad case of COVID in late August of 2023, so I was going into the expedition a bit run down and without a great base of training. I was healthy by the time I got to Nepal, but struggled to balance training and recovery on the mountain.

Since it was my first 8000m mountain, I made a lot of classic rookie mistakes. Probably the most important was that I actually went to the summit on a training day before my FKT attempt. I’d befriended two Swiss guys at Base Camp and decided to accompany them on their summit push as a long training day. For what it’s worth, I’d done this many times before (i.e. gone to the summit on an “easy” training day, on Aconcagua, Kilimanjaro, etc.), but the difference between even an almost-7000m mountain like Aconcagua and an 8000m like Manaslu is tremendous.

In short, I got my butt kicked on what turned out to be a 36+ hour round-trip to the summit “training day”, my body was completely toasted and I had no energy left for my FKT attempt a few days later. I turned around at about 7700m and was already thinking about when I could give it another go. Unfortunately, I’d have to wait almost exactly a year.

Walk us through your preparation for the FKT. What were you doing before you got to Nepal?

I’d been thinking about this record on this mountain for almost a year and I knew I had to fix some of the mistakes I’d made in 2023. The first step was to have a strong, healthy summer of training and not to get sick right before arriving in Nepal!

My summer ended up going extremely well. I was training in my home base of Quito, Ecuador, living at 2850m and running almost every day up our “local hill” to 4700m. I had two really positive tests of my fitness there: First, I broke the long-standing course record on the Polichaski Vertical Kilometer, one of the most competitive up-hill routes in South America, and a record I’d been trying to break for at least 5 years. Then, in early August, I won the UTMB Quito 80km trail race, defeating an extremely strong field over the long, high-altitude course.

I was super confident after these two victories, and focused on uphill training, very long days, and altitude over the next month. I spent a week guiding a trail-running trip in Peru right after UTMB-Q, including a 65km day running the entire Inca Trail, then spent some time in Colorado, including another very long day pacing my friend, Brian Reynolds, at the Leadville 100, and finally spent a week in Chamonix, France, where I put in my last massive week of training (214 km, 16,000m of elevation gain, in 26 hours), including an 80km run on the UTMB Mont Blanc course.

When I left Europe, I knew I was as fit as I’d ever been and ready to hit the big mountains!

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And then what was training like in Nepal? What prep work did you do on the mountain?

Another thing we did better this year is that we arrived much earlier to Base Camp, Sept 4 vs. Sept 12. This gave my body more time to get used to the higher altitude, get more familiar with the route, and would ultimately let me go for the FKT much earlier than originally planned.

Life at BC at 4850m is remarkably comfortable. I am a creature of habit, and having been on a handful of Himalayan expeditions at this point, I knew that having the space and tools to continue training and keep my routines as an athlete would be important for me. 

Thus, one of the most ridiculous things we did this season was to carry up a passive stationary bike all the way to BC. This ended up being an extremely helpful training tool and definitely one of my “secrets” to success on the mountain this year. 

Why bring a stationary bike to BC at 4850m? Well, it can be hard to hit the right energy systems to maintain fitness up this high. “Running” at this altitude is extremely taxing on the body and, practically, there simply isn’t a lot of space to run at any kind of reasonable speed. So, the bike allows us to train at a much higher intensity and to make sure the body doesn’t lose too much fitness up high, as it is prone to do. It’s also a great way to add some lower-intensity volume without putting as much strain on the legs. Long story short: It’s pretty absurd, but I think it was definitely worth it.

Training on the mountain itself also went great. I felt significantly more comfortable on the terrain than last year and even from the first few days, I was moving much quicker on the same sections. For the most part, we kept our training to the stretch from BC to Upper Camp 1 (5825m). I probably did this section at least 10 times in the first two weeks on the mountain; it got very familiar.

Finally, we did a big push up to Camp 3 (6630m), carrying (for me) a very heavy pack, so that we had an “aid station” up high where we could get our warmer gear, food, etc., during our summit days. That was the highest we got before the FKT day and it was our only day above Camp 1.

Walk us through the record-setting day itself. How did it start out?

It started very anticlimactically. Originally, my friend Chris Fisher and I were both planning to go together to Camp 4 as a long training day, but he’d picked up a stomach bug, so the plan was actually just to do a long solo training day and come back down and then go for the FKT 3-5 days later. That was the plan!

So, yes, there was absolutely no excitement or fanfare as I left. Literally 0% of me was thinking about going to the summit as I drank coffee and packed up my stuff alone at like 02:30 am in the freezing dark. I did have my GPS watch and my GPS tracker, which I turned on only for safety and to keep the rest of the group apprised of my whereabouts. 

The first few sections went fine, no fireworks, but I was making good time. I hit first light during the more technical climbing section between C1 and C2, which was perfect, and luckily had no traffic on any of the pinch points there. “Gringo Dawn” (direct sunlight) hit me right on the headwall below C2 and from that point on, I almost never felt cold.

I didn’t stop at all until arriving at Camp 3 (6630m), where I took about 15 minutes to grab some extra gear and food. My biggest regret was not getting more water at this point, as I was still only planning to continue for maybe 1-2 more hours uphill and then come right back down. So, I left from C3 with maybe a half liter of water.

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So when did you decide you would actually go for the FKT?

It was sometime during this stretch from C3 to C4 that I started to think about just going for the summit. I knew I was making good time, but I was really just thinking about today as a training day / proof of concept for when I would come back and attempt FKT the following week. But, as I got a few hundred meters above C3, I started to do some simple math (a good sign that my brain was still working well enough) and realized that if I could maintain even a moderate pace to C4 and then slog my way to the summit, I might be able to get it today.

I took a second and evaluated the situation: I had pretty minimal clothing, very light-weight footwear, enough calories of food to get me up and down, but only a tiny bit of water. I knew it was a gamble, so I called our expedition leader, Dawa Steven Sherpa on the radio. Our conversation went something like this.

“Dawa, Dawa, this is Ty; are you somewhere private on radio?”

“Ty, yep, copy, this is Dawa and I hear you.”

“Dawa, don’t say anything to anyone yet because I don’t want to jinx it, but I’m thinking about just going to the summit. I have food, but minimal gear and not much water. Can you see the slope to the summit and do you see any wind?”

“Copy that, Ty. Right now, perfectly clear skies and no sign of wind on the upper slopes. You are well ahead of your pace last year, so let’s see what the time is when you get to Camp 4.”

I maintained a solid pace to Camp 4 at 7450m and at that point had fully committed to the summit. I had written down 10 hours as my goal time and had calculated the splits I need to hit at each camp to get there. I passed C4 at 6h04, so I had just under 4 hours to cover the last 713 vertical meters.

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What was the hardest part of the day? 

Not surprisingly, these final hours proved to be the hardest of the day. Climbing into the aptly named “Death Zone”, the super-thin, high-altitude air where life is a struggle, is always a challenge, and that tested my mental and physical limits to the fullest. I find that the mind becomes the key player in extreme altitude as I always experience a tremendous desire to simply turn around and go down. Taking even a few consecutive steps can require 10-20 panting breaths. This is the territory where I look to solace from one of my favorite quotes about dealing with pain: 

“No one single instant of it was unendurable. Here was a second right here: He endured it. What was undealable-with was the thought of all the instants all lined up and stretching ahead, glittering… It's too much to think about. To abide there. But none of it’s as of now real. What’s real is the pain.. He could just hunker down in the space between each heart-beat and make each heartbeat a wall and live in there. Not let his head look over. What’s unendurable is what his own head could make of it all. What his head could report to him, looking over and ahead and reporting. But he could choose not to listen; he could treat his head like clueless noise. He hadn’t quite gotten this before now: Everything unendurable was in the head, was the head not Abiding in the Present but hopping the wall and doing a recon and then returning with the unendurable news that you then somehow believed.” - David Foster Wallace.

So, I tried not to look at the summit (which is visible from an alarmingly long way away), but rather looked for tiny landmarks in the snow, a rock, a small crevasse, or would simply count. “I bet you can’t take 20 continuous steps,” I’d tell myself, and then I’d do it, and maybe get to 24 or even 30.

And this way, I made it up, step by step, until I found myself well over 8000m and on on the extremely exposed traverse around the previously-thought-to-be summit cone and onto the base of the true summit, one more pitch now, I turned on my helmet-cam thinking it’d be just a few seconds to the true summit, but really those final 20m took seven excruciating minutes (I’d realize later, looking at the video). But then, it was over and there was no more up to go.

It had been 9 hours, 53 minutes, and 13 seconds since leaving base camp.

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What was the most beautiful/joyful part of the day?

On the way up to the summit, I’d called Dawa again and asked him to see if he could get my parents on the phone at BC and then put them on speaker phone over our radios so I could share this moment with them. Dawa is nothing if not a miracle worker on the logistics side, so I was able to make an (extremely breathless and emotional and tearful) call down to BC and talk to not only Dawa and Chris but also my mother and father, who we’d woken up panic-stricken at 3am local time some 10,000 miles away.

I am so grateful to my parents for their support, especially in what has been an extremely difficult last year (that’s a whole other story/interview), and being able to tell them how much I loved them and how thankful I was for everything they’d done, all while staring out at the most incredible 360 degree panorama of snow-capped giant mountains. Well, it was one of the more special moments of my life.

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And then what was it like going back down? Did you set a round-trip record as well?

The descent felt long and exhausting. I had been going for 10+ hours at this point on only 1L of water and had resorted to scooping snow into my bottle and waiting for it to melt. The long slope from the summit back to C4 was brutal as I fought with my head and legs, screaming for water and oxygen and rest.

I again took it one little piece at a time and somehow made it down to C4 and then C3, where I found some of our expedition team-mates and was able to finally get some water from our tent.

The final descent down to C2, C1, and Base Camp was uneventful and I was delighted to see Chris walking uphill toward me as I came into BC so we could enjoy the moment and walk in the final meters together.

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Tell us about your gear. What did you wear/use and how is that different from a standard climber?

This is a “do as I say, not as I do” kind of answer. Please, please do not attempt to climb 8000m mountains with this gear.

I got extremely lucky with the weather. The day was perfect, with warm sun and almost no wind. Thus, I was able to get away with an extremely minimal gear setup. Here’s everything I used (note the footnotes for full-disclosure on what I got for free/am paid to use):

Feet: La Sportiva Cyklon Cross GTX (basically a trail running shoe w/ an attached Gortex gaiter), merino wool running socks

Legs: La Sportiva Roseg Pants, compression shorts

Torso / hands: La Sportiva merino wool baselayer longsleeve (customized as half-zip), La Sportiva Pocketshell windbreaker, light down hoodie, insulated mittens

Head: Chaski Buff, LaSportiva cap, light climbing helmet, goggles

Other gear: minimalistic climbing harness, lightweight ice axe, 30L backpack

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What about nutrition? What do you eat/drink on an effort this long? Do you carry everything with you?

I carried enough calories for almost the entire day, as my plan was to leave some of it up high at C3 for what was originally my planned FKT day the following week.

I tried to consume about 300-400 calories per hour, mostly in simple carbohydrates. This was mostly in the form of Maurten drink mix and LMNT drink mix (for extra electrolytes), Gu gels, a mix of products from Naak, and then a variety of cookies and candy from base camp, including Oreos, Mars/Snickers bars, and even some chapati and egg roll-ups.

I generally set a timer to beep every 20 minutes in a big effort and then try to eat about 100 calories every time it goes off. This has served me very well.

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Are you satisfied with the effort? Do you think the record can be brought down even faster?

“I will never be satisfied” -- Hamilton.

But really, I am extremely proud of this effort. It was a monumental improvement over last year’s failure and a very solid improvement over the previous record (and no disrespect to Pemba Gelje; anyone going BC to Summit without gas in a single push is a beast).

That said, I do think this mark could go down even faster. I think with another 1-2 trips higher on the mountain, my acclimatization would have been better above C4 and there’s probably at least an hour that could come off just with that.

For now, though, I’m very happy to have broken 10 hours and I hope to see others give it a go!

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What’s next for you? Do you have more goals in Nepal and the Himalaya?

First thing’s first, we’ve got to get Chris to the summit! So the plan is to help him with his summit push and ski-descent.
After that, our plan is to head over to the Khumbu Valley (the region home to Mt Everest) in October, where we have a whole bunch of projects to tackle, exact details coming soon.

In the long-term, though, this has been a fantastic proof of concept for a record attempt on the biggest stage of all: Mt. Everest. That one is coming soon. Stay with us.

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Anything else you’d like to share?

I mostly feel an immense sense of gratitude. I am grateful to Apu Manaslu for granting me safe passage up and down her beautiful slopes; I am grateful to my climbing partner, Chris, for all his help and camaraderie and encouragement; I am grateful to Dawa Steven Sherpa and Asian Trekking for the absolute best logistical support in the mountains -- I will never do an expedition with anyone else; I am grateful to my parents for their love and support for my entire life and especially in the last year; I am grateful to my agent and good friend, Jim, for all his help, support, and many laughs; I am grateful to my sponsors, especially La Sportiva, who have made this insane pursuit into a career, as well as everyone at Chaski for their support and encouragement.

I am grateful for my body for allowing me to do these -- even to me -- unbelievable things.

And finally, I am grateful to all of my friends, fans, and random acquaintances, on the mountain and around the world. Anyone who gave me a smile or said hello or sent well-wishes or congrats, all of this means the world to me and I am so grateful for you.

To the top!

Our congrats to Ty on another tremendous record. You can follow his journey on Instagram at @TylerCAndrews and can join Ty on one of his adventures or work with him to help prepare for your own goals at www.chaski.run. 

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