Sunday, January 02, 2011

2 Mil Hill


2 Million With Greg Hill from FD Productions on Vimeo.

Throwing a little more Greg Hill love your way for the New Year. This is one of the coolest pedestrian challenges I’ve seen. Not that Hill is a pedestrian skier. He’s one of the best. But this challenge is more about sacrifice and commitment than talent. You don’t have to be an Olympian. Anyone could give this a whirl. But only someone special would have the will to see it through.

Many of the travails of big challenges are conveyed in this video. I’ve experienced a lot of these during my lesser objectives. I’ve always wanted to do a year-long challenge but the logistics have been too much. I’m a fairly energetic guy but a slacker compared to Hill. Maybe one of these years I’ll get it together. In the mean time, we can live vicariously through people like Greg, who show us that with enough motivation it’s always possible to raise the bar.

8 comments:

  1. I've been following this, it's just so insanely COOL! And that he accomplished his mission with a day to spare... sheer awesomeness. ;-)

    Just goes to show you what you can do when you make a DECISION to get something done.

    Happy New Year, Steve!

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  2. Super rad, but in all fairness, when going skiing is how you make your living, it gets rid of the primary roadblock that prevents people like you (or I) from doing an epic year-long event.

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  3. True, but he also didn't fall into that line of work and didn't get there by being better than everyone. He just went after it, which we could probably do, too, if there was any one thing we were so focused on.

    I like doing lots of different things. I'd have been better off if I were really into luggage.

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  4. After watching this again I don't think it would up the field too much if money weren't the issue. Okay, WE may try this but how many people would actually make this sacrifice? A lot of days this year, and probably a lot of months, most likely weren't all that fun. Methinks most people would cash it in once the reality of the project set in. 200 10,000'days is a lot of going up, even if the down is all fun.

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  5. I think that my somewhat negative vibe stems from your comment that "Year long logistics have been too much", followed by saying you're "a slacker compared to Hill".

    I think you're selling yourself short...if someone like you was motivated enough to be a full-time skier and getting paid to do it, if you'd thought of skiing 2mil you'd have done it.

    It only makes me think of how rad it was when Hans, a married father of two very young children, with a full time desk job, nabbed the coveted Nose record a couple years ago (a fact that was lost on the climbing media).

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  6. Franz3:18 PM

    There's a reason that mountain had never been skied before.

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  7. Aaron5:19 PM

    I'm somewhat terrified of what Hans is going to do now that his job is in a climbing gym instead of behind a desk. How many laps of El Cap would be 1 million feet?

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  8. Steve - posts like this and your birthday challenges have inspired me. Thank you - you might not know the impact your site and stories like this have on us out here in the ol' interwebz, but they do. I'm doing my own (FIRST!) b-day challenge. Nothing like this craziness, but it's my first one as a recent P90X grad. Link: http://anysizefitness.com/2011/01/03/coach-matts-birthday-challenge/

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