Fighting Goliath

Before last summer, no climber had gone the distance with California's Goliath Traverse, spanning 60 brutal peaks of the Sierra Nevada. A crazier challenge? Do it in eight days.

- By Chris Van Leuven

I 'm just hoping it won't make me a statistic, says Vitaliy Musiyenko from across my dinner table in Mariposa, CA, just outside Yosemite National Park. The 35-year-old climber is referring to his voracious passion for doing new routes and ropeless climbs in the nearby Sierra Nevada range, while performing endurance feats and Fastest Known Times (FKTs) that boggle the mind.

Musiyenko's magnum opus is the Goliath-an endurance climb so overthe-top that he actually had to coin the name Goliath himself. He's vaguely heard of a few other attempts on this routenone of which came even remotely close to completion. Supposedly one team starting from the north got about as far as Palisade Crest before deciding the rock was too loose and not worth the risk, he says. Musiyenko's colleague Alex Honnold, of Free Solo fame, calls Goliath the longest and most adventurous ridge traverse I've ever heard of. Literally miles of rock climbing. The mere thought of it, adds Honnold, leaves him horrified, repulsed and inspired.

At the table, Musiyenko is donning a chalk-dusted jacket that hides his solid frame. Bloodstained athletic tape is still wrapped around his hands from logging 2,000 vertical feet of Yosemite climbing over the last couple of days. Just a little extracurricular activity while here to share his Goliath experience with me. A journey so long that it fits on two maps. So arduous that only portions of it have been tackled by the world's best, luring in mountaineering luminaries like Peter Croft and Conrad Anker.

That's what attracts us to do hard things, Musiyenko says matter-of-factly.