Climbing Mount Washington, in the dead of winter, on a fat bike: It sounds more like an escalated dare than a human achievement. But professional cyclist Tim Johnson has succeeded at crushing the highest peak in the Northeast in weather so bad even your grandpa wouldn’t claim to have walked to school in it.
Riding 4,685 feet up a 14-percent grade of snow and ice, the six-time National Cyclocross Champion conquered the 7.6-mile Mount Washington Auto Road in 1:45:48 and became the first to ascend it in winter. Not only did he have a long, challenging climb to contend with, but he also braved a -19 degree wind chill and 49 mile per hour wind gusts. But Johnson was familiar with the challenges of Mount Washington—he started his career by winning the Mount Washington Hill Climb in 2000 and 2001 on a road bike—albeit in more favorable summertime conditions. (For comparison, he finished those rides in 0:55:46 and 0:53:31, respectively.)
“I feel like I was fighting being too hot in the beginning because the first pitch out of the parking lot is one of the steepest pitches of the entire climb. You go from standing still to immediately realizing that this is one of the hardest climbs in North America,” Johnson says. “By the time I got up to the Hair Pin turn, it was really windy, I had no traction and it was really tough to find any way to keep moving forward. I couldn’t even stay upright.”
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Get a feel for what Johnson went through to add this “first” to his long list of palmares and achievements below.
