If you think hiking Mount Rainier two or three times is impressive, you should meet George Dunn.
This July, 56-year-old George Dunn became the first person to climb Mount Rainier 500 times. You read correctly – five hundred times!
Dunn is a Mount Rainer hiking guide and director of Ashford’s International Mountain Guides. He completed the hike with his wife Nancy, his 16 year old son Jeremy, and his lifelong friend Phil Ershler, who has completed the summit 440 times himself.
“George is a consummate professional and a true gentleman,” climbing guide Gary Talcott said in the News Tribune Adventure Guys Blog. “He’s guided, mentored and inspired countless climbers, including some of the best, like Ed Viesturs.”
[Ed Viesturs is the only American to climb all of the world’s 8,000-meter peaks.]
Let’s stop for a moment and think about how much mountain climbing 500 successful summits is, exactly. Well, according to The Adventure Guys Blog, Dunn has covered approximately 9,000 miles and 4.5 million vertical feet. To put that into prospective, that’s a little over 852 vertical miles. That’s roughly one-tenth the width of the Earth. In other words, that’s a lot of hiking.
Dunn started climbing Mount Rainier while he was attending Renton High School in the late 60s. He started guiding hikes in 1975.
Not impressed? Well, grab your gear and LED flashlight and get hiking! Dunn’s 500-hike record is just waiting to be broken. Could that record-breaking hiker be you?