New Zealander Matheson Brown climbed 50 US peaks in 20 days to best a record set by a professional endurance athlete.

Standing on top of Mt Rainier in Washington State in July last year, 28-year-old New Zealander Matheson Brown claimed the new fastest known time for climbing the highest peak of each US state.

The record attempt was a long time in the making, the seed first planted when Brown realised climbing was his favourite activity while studying outdoor leadership and management at Otago Polytechnic.

“As soon as I learned about rock climbing and mountaineering, I knew the day would come when I committed to it completely,” Brown says. 

He first set foot in the US after graduating from his course in 2017, when he hiked 3500km of the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine.  

He then returned to New Zealand, but a few years later, he was back in the US to make the YouTube documentary Chasing Vertical, which follows his nine-month training journey to climb the formidable Half Dome in Yosemite National Park. His aim with the documentary was to show viewers that it’s possible to challenge our own limits; instead of quitting in the face of a difficult situation, figure out the next steps to make it work.

“A lot of the time we put limits on ourselves and think some dreams are for a different category of person and not for us,” he says. “And that’s stuff I’ve been told in the past, too, but I didn’t believe it – or at least I wanted to see if it was true.” 

Brown wondered how many people were out there, like him, wanting to try something but thinking it wasn’t for them. 

“So I went out and did it for myself. I climbed Half Dome and was like, ‘oh, this is for me’,” he says. “There are a lot of people out there not achieving their dreams – not because they aren’t capable, but because they don’t believe they’re capable.”

His next goal was to climb the highest peak in each of the 50 US states to demonstrate that ordinary people can chase world records. A slow period during Covid lockdowns allowed him to crunch the numbers on how to get quickly from one peak to the next. He thought it seemed do-able. 

Brown’s passion for the challenge flared when he realised the current record holder, pro endurance athlete Colin O’Brady, had used a private jet to fly between states. At first Brown thought this ruined the game for regular people: “It almost seemed like someone had come in and paid to win.” 

Brown worked as a painter, a scaffolder, picked apples and cherries and worked in construction and forestry to earn the money he needed for the record attempt. 

For training, after a 12-hour day of forestry he would run a half-marathon before dinner, followed by a core workout. “It sucked,” he confirms, “but by the time I started the record attempt, it was barely harder than the training. I had busted my gut for a year for this, so when I started running and climbing I was never going to stop,” he said.

Brown flew economy class and was accompanied by his father in a car. Starting with 6190m Mt Denali in Alaska, over the next three weeks he slept no more than four hours a day and fuelled himself on freeze-dried meals and McDonalds. Remarkably, he completed the feat in 20 days and 14 hours; O’Brady managed it in 21 days and nine hours.

His thoughts once he’d claimed the record? “I was just glad that everyone who helped me hadn’t helped me for no reason.”

Brown hasn’t taken much downtime, either, and is working three jobs to save up again. 

“I’ve got more world records that I want to try to break,” he says. “If you want the thing, you’re either going to prove to yourself that you want it, or prove to yourself that you don’t want it that bad. If you really want it, you’ll do whatever it takes and have some fun while you’re at it.”