“The last 36 hours have been pretty intense.”

Welcome to the understatement of the month.

Joe Grant woke up in Frisco Thursday morning, got on his bike, pedaled up Argentine Pass, climbed the adjacent fourteeners Grays Peak and Torreys Peak and returned to Georgetown that afternoon. After a bit of food he got on his bike and started pedaling. Down to Idaho Springs. Up to Central City. Over to Nederland.

He arrived at the trailhead of Longs Peak at 3 a.m. Friday. He was thinking he’d sleep for a bit. But some eager hikers were beginning their trek up the Rocky Mountain National Park fourteener.

“They were all happy and like ‘Good morning. Are you heading up the peak?’ And I said ‘I guess I am,’ ” Grant said.

He arrived at the top of Longs around sunrise. There were a few inches of snow on the ground. The sun was glowing beneath a thick layer of clouds.

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Back down and back on the bike. Around 1:30 p.m. Friday he arrived at his home up in Gold Hill. It had been close to 36 hours since he slept and 31 days and 8½ hours since embarked on his self-designed Tour de 14er, a self-propelled, self-supported mission to ride his bike to and then climb 57 of the state’s highest points.

His time was the fastest ever for a self-supported, all human-powered loop of the state’s fourteeners. But Grant didn’t grind nearly 1,500 miles and scramble up 57 peaks for a spot in a record book. Any record, he said, is “irrelevant.”

“That’s like going to college for a piece of paper,” he said, a half hour after arriving back home Friday and admitting to a touch of fatigue-induced delirium. “You really should go for an education. I felt that way this trip. The experience is so much more interesting and valuable than a number on a spreadsheet at the end.”

Hiking, biking and mountaineering adventurer Justin Simoni set the fastest pace in 2014, pedaling more than 1,600 miles and hiking nearly 400 miles to reach the top of every Colorado highpoint in 34½ days.

Simoni cheered Grant’s record-breaking mission.

“I’m more about promoting the idea of doing these types of self-powered adventures. The record is really meaningless to me. It’s about the adventure you have and the journey you are taking,” Simoni said. “So many times on my trip I’d say to myself, I can’t believe these things are happening right now. I woke up and saw a bear and then climbed three fourteeners and then rode my bike 100 miles. It was a lot to take on as a challenge. Adventures in sleep deprivation. But so rewarding on many levels.”

Grant, 33, started on July 26. He had a permit for the private Culebra Peak on July 30. But he wasn’t about to pedal past eight fourteeners he would eventually have to revisit. So he started hard, climbing Mounts Bierstadt and Evans on his first day. Pikes Peak on his second and Humboldt Peak, Kit Carson Peak, Challenger Point, Crestone Peak and Crestone Needle on his third, arriving at Culebra just in time for his permit. There were many big days like that.

In the Elk Range above Aspen’s Roaring Fork Valley a week ago, Grant climbed Castle Peak and Conundrum Peak in a day, pedaled over to the Maroon Bells and climbed Maroon Peak, North Maroon Peak and Pyramid Peak the next day, pedaled back to Aspen and looped over to hit Snowmass Peak and Capitol Peak a day later. Those are some of the most difficult fourteener ascents in the state and Grant linked them all in three days with a bike.

“Those were some long days,” he said.

He didn’t necessarily intend to be in a hurry, but instead of adding extra days for traveling between peaks, Grant would just get in the saddle and ride through the night so he would be poised for an early ascent the next morning.

“You just kind of adapt and go with the flow of how things go. I wanted to challenge myself and move relatively quickly, but also part of that influenced by weather and needing to be in certain sports to go up a peak in the morning so I had to get to trailheads overnight,” he said, adding that time in the saddle was like “a break from running and hiking.”

“On a bike you just sit there and pedal,” said Grant, an endurance athlete who counts Scarpa, Patagonia and Lyon’s Oskar Blues and Reeb Cycles as sponsors.

Grant said he never pondered quitting. Never got too low. A broken rim in Alamosa sidelined him for a couple days, but other than that, he pretty much never stopped moving. He gathered supplies at stores along the way and slept on the ground for a few hours next to his bike most nights. Per the bikepacking ethic, he was unaided for the whole mission. No support rigs at trailheads. No gear caches in the woods. Everything he had, he carried.

He would allow emotions to well atop peaks. Down below, he worked.

“There were some really good, amazing days and some really low points too, but during the low points, it was a matter of realizing and adjusting mentally and saying hey this is a long trip,” he said. “There’s time for everything. There’s no real imperative to go fast. I really liked those contrasts.”

Joe Grant’s Tour de 14er, July 26-Aug. 26

there are 53 “official” 14ers and a handful of others that have summits at 14,000 feet or higher, but don’t make the official cut because the saddle between an adjacent 14er doesn’t drop at least 300 feet.

July 26, 2016: Mount Bierdstadt

July 26, 2016: Mount Evans

July 27, 2016: Pikes Peak

July 28, 2016: Humboldt Peak

July 28, 2016: Kit Carson Peak

July 28, 2016: Challenger Point

July 28, 2016: Crestone Peak

July 28, 2016: Crestone Needle

July 30, 2016: Culebra Peak

July 31, 2016: Blanca Peak

July 31, 2016: Mount Lindsey

July 31, 2016: Little Bear Peak

July 31, 2016: Ellingwood Point

Aug. 3, 2016: San Luis Peak

Aug. 4, 2016: Redcloud Peak

Aug. 4, 2016: Sunshine Peak

Aug. 4, 2016: Handies Peak

Aug. 6, 2016: Mount Elous

Aug. 6, 2016: North Eolus

Aug. 6, 2016: Sunlight Peak

Aug. 6, 2016: Windom Peak

Aug. 8, 2016: Mount Wilson

Aug. 8, 2016: El Diente

Aug. 8, 2016: Wilson Peak

Aug. 9, 2016: Mount Sneffels

Aug. 10, 2016: Wetterhorn Peak

Aug. 10, 2016: Uncompahgre Peak

Aug. 12, 2016: Tabeguache Peak

Aug. 12, 2016: Mount Shavano

Aug. 12, 2016: Mount Antero

Aug. 13, 2016: Mount Princeton

Aug. 14, 2016: Mount Yale

Aug. 15, 2016: Mount Harvard

Aug. 15, 2016: Mount Columbia

Aug. 16, 2016: Mount Belford

Aug. 16, 2016: Mount Oxford

Aug. 16, 2016: Missouri Mountain

Aug. 16, 2016: Huron Peak

Aug. 16, 2016: La Plata Peak

Aug. 18, 2016: Castle Peak

Aug. 18, 2016: Conundrum Peak

Aug. 19, 2016: Maroon Peak

Aug. 19, 2016: North Maroon Peak

Aug. 19, 2016: Pyramid Peak

Aug. 20, 2016: Snowmass Peak

Aug. 20, 2016: Capitol Peak

Aug. 21, 2016: Mount Elbert

Aug. 22, 2016: Mount Massive

Aug. 22, 2016: Mount Sherman

Aug. 23, 2016: Mount of the Holy Cross

Aug. 24, 2016: Mount Democrat

Aug. 24, 2016: Mount Cameron

Aug. 24, 2016: Mount Lincoln

Aug. 24, 2016: Quandry Peak

Aug. 25, 2016: Grays Peak

Aug. 25, 2016: Torreys Peak

Aug. 26, 2016: Longs Peak