Joseph DeMoor has a confession to make.
He knows it sounds silly, but he likes to see his name listed on the first page of fastestknowntime.com/athletes. There are, at last check, 487 pages you could scroll through — names listed with their number of fastest known times, or FKTs, as the rather obscure records are known in the world of outdoor athletics.
And yes, at last check, DeMoor’s name was one of 20 on that first page. With 52 FKTs logged across Colorado’s mountains and beyond, the Carbondale man’s name stood 15th on the list of world record holders.
A college running buddy’s name had slipped to the second page.
“We have this running joke, we’re trying to stay on the first page,” DeMoor says. “Right now I’m on the first page, but not by much. I gotta keep my eye on that.”
Forgive his competitive spirit, however peculiar.
“There’s a certain population of people who want to see what they can do, and this is a way to do it,” says Buzz Burrell, the competitive mountain runner out of Boulder credited with co-creating the FKT phenomenon around the turn of the century.
The website he helped start is now owned by Outside Inc. — a sure sign of the once-underground scene going mainstream.
The site lists nearly 6,100 routes around the world. Those are trails long and short, single summits and multi-peak pushes, various loops and traverses that people have stamped their name upon with times recorded and verified by gate-keeping measures developed almost 25 years ago by Burrell and a Boulder collaborator, Peter Bakwin.
The site lists more than 200 routes in Colorado.
“It’s so incredibly overwhelming,” says Andrea Sansone, a regular watcher and record chaser in Golden. “It’s crazy.”
However crazy, it’s a way of life for Chris Fisher. Along with the record for climbing all 54 of Colorado’s 14,000-foot mountains in the single winter of 2023, he holds 21 more FKTs logged on fastestknowntime.com.
“I chase hard objectives for myself, to test myself, to learn more about myself,” Fisher says. “I chase the human experience.”
It’s the experience afforded by some of those 200-plus routes in Colorado.
Here we take a look at some of the most-sought, vaunted and respected FKTs around the state:
Colorado Trail
It’s one of 10 routes worldwide that fastestknowntime.com lists as a “premier route” — “high-visibility routes that attract national attention and top athletes.”
With variations on direction and support, last year saw multiple new records on the trail running 500 miles through the state’s signature scenery between Denver and Durango. Claire Bannwarth notched a self-supported women’s mark of nine days, two hours and 50 minutes.
Maroon Bells Four Pass Loop
“Definitely a classic,” says DeMoor, living not far from what many pure, serious trail runners would call one of the best routes in Colorado for its challenge and sheer beauty around Maroon Bells-Snowmass Wilderness. That includes DeMoor.
“Having run that loop and been on those trails a lot, I’m still very impressed by Morgan Elliott,” he says. In 2017, Elliott covered the 28 miles and 7,800 feet of vertical in four hours and 17 minutes.
Nolan’s 14
This is Colorado’s other “premier route.” It spans fourteen fourteeners across the Sawatch Range, covering around 100 miles and 44,000 feet of vertical gain.
Sansone has her name on both north-bound and south-bound routes, plus claim to Holy Nolan’s — the effort adding a 15th fourteener, Holy Cross, achieved alongside partner Andrew Hamilton.
Last year’s time by David Hedges, a day and 15 hours, stands as the fastest time among all categories.
Colorado Fourteeners
Hamilton has been known as “the King of the Fourteeners” since 2015 saw him bag all 58 of the state’s highest points while fighting sleep over nine days.
In 2018, Hamilton took 84 days to climb them all in the winter. Fisher beat that last year by 12 days.
Centennial Elks Traverse
This is another one of Hamilton’s proud FKTs, and one that other onlookers agree represents classic Colorado and true grit. “Probably one of the best sets of 10 peaks you can put together in Colorado,” goes the description by Hamilton.
Those include the Maroon Bells and the notorious Capitol and Pyramid peaks. “Some of the hardest (peaks) in the state, and you’re linking them all up,” Hamilton says.
He counted himself “blown away” by the fastest time set last year by Olympian Simi Hamilton on the standard, seven-peak Elks Traverse: 16 hours and 46 minutes, better than the previous mark of a day and seven hours.
Tenmile Traverse
Among big mountain link-ups in Colorado, Burrell has watched this one receive periods of popularity since he and Bakwin logged a 2014 record over the high-alpine summits between Frisco and Breckenridge. That record was topped in 2022.
Peaks 1-10 — especially known by Breckenridge Resort skiers — run between 12,800 feet and above 13,600. Last year, Jackson Cole claimed all of them under four hours.
LA Freeway
Take it from Gerry Roach, the renowned mountaineer who cut his teeth as a youngster in Boulder: “In the late 1950s Carl Pfiffner spoke passionately about traversing from the Arapaho peaks to Longs Peak along the Continental Divide. This project retains all of its original mystique,” Roach wrote, calling it “the ultimate mountaineering adventure in the Front Range.”
Burrell ran with the concept, literally, and made famous the name LA Freeway. “It’s a fantastic route,” he says. “Well above timberline for 30 miles, and you don’t ever need a map. The only rule is to stay on the ridge.”
Longs Peak
Among all of the fourteeners and any number of lower mountains home to their own FKTs, Longs Peak stands out, Burrell says. It’s simply an icon, he says.
He adds: “There’s a lot of FKTs and so forth that you have to explain what it is, but the fastest person to run up and down Longs Peak needs no explanation. And the fact it’s under two hours is exceptional.”
Pikes Peak
America’s Mountain similarly needs no explanation, Burrell says. But he and other longtime participants and followers of endurance sports still struggle to wrap their heads around the legendary dash of 1993.
That year at the Pikes Peak Marathon, local Matt Carpenter ran up and down Barr Trail in three hours, 16 minutes and 39 seconds. This generation’s greatest, Kilian Jornet, came up 11 minutes short in 2019.
“Matt’s record on Pikes Peak is one of the best records in any sport, on any continent,” Burrell says.
Manitou Incline
The mountainside stairstepper, a historic funicular railway-turned-fitness phenomenon, is “a total classic,” Bakwin previously told The Gazette. “The classic FKT is the little local hill where all the fast local people want to make their mark.”
They do it in different ways: a straight up ascent on the grueling steps gaining 2,000 feet in less than a mile; 13 round trips for an Inclinathon; and other records for most climbs in a month and a year.
In 2022, Swiss runner Remi Bonnet trotted up in 17 minutes and 25 seconds, beating a local time that stood since 2015.
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