Monsoon rains were pounding Colorado and the late-season snow still blanketed the state’s highest peaks when Denver mountaineering legend Andrew Hamilton started up southern Colorado’s Windom Peak before dawn on June 29.

On Tuesday morning, the 40-year-old stay-at-home father of four was atop La Plata Peak in central Colorado, the 47th 14,000-foot summit he had reached in a little more than 196 hours. Despite the rain and snow, Hamilton is on a blistering pace to climb all points above 14,000 feet in Colorado in a single push. He’s pacing well ahead of a record that has thwarted dozens of the world’s speediest mountaineers since 2000.

If all goes as planned, Hamilton will be racing down a likely rain-soaked Longs Peak — his 58th and final high point over 14,000 feet in Colorado, as recognized by the U.S. Geological Survey — on Wednesday afternoon, roughly 227 hours after starting up Windom.

MAP: Follow Hamilton’s attempt live.

Amazingly, Hamilton has remained within a few hours of a complicated, meticulously assembled plan set in motion at 4:30 a.m. June 29. Hamilton likes to say he’s not the fastest athlete in the hills — but he can suffer like no other and keep going.

He always deflects praise to his crew, which this year navigated the state’s heavy July 4 crowds as they shuttled him between peaks as he lay prone for scheduled two-hour nibbles of sleep after gobbling calzones, baked potatoes or pad thai noodles. (Hamilton is a vegetarian.)

Hamilton once briefly owned the fourteener speed record. In 1999, after studying maps and training, he climbed all the state’s highest peaks over 14,000 feet in less than 14 days, beating the record by a slim 88 minutes. The next year his record was bested by Teddy Keizer, who sped across the state’s highest peaks in 10 days, 20 hours and 26 minutes.

That record has stood — despite dozens of attempts — since 2000.

“Defining experience”

“Looking back, my experience in 1999 was a defining experience in my life,” Hamilton wrote in his website bio. “I have never been a great athlete, and compared to other record setters my pace is almost embarrassingly slow. However, I was able to persist through pain, sleep deprivation, desperation, hallucination, etc., to finally succeed with the goal.”

Keizer, who founded a tutoring company in Oregon, said Hamilton “deserves the record more than anyone else.

“He knows those mountains so well and he is such an avid mountaineer, I think he reflects the true spirit of mountaineering,” Keizer said. “It’s inspiring to see someone perform at such a high level. It’s so inspiring to watch.”

In 2003, Hamilton set the self-powered speed record for the state’s fourteeners, pedaling his bike between peaks and never riding in a car. Perhaps Hamilton’s greatest feat is climbing all the state’s fourteeners with his kids. His oldest son, Calvin, was 4 on his first fourteener and 8 on his last in 2011. In 2013, Hamilton’s second-oldest son, Axel, finished all the state’s fourteeners at age 6.

“It made me very tired when Axel said that next he wants to climb all of the 13ers in the state,” Hamilton wrote in a 14ers.com forum post announcing the monumental father-son achievement.

Last year, Hamilton tried again to topple Keizer’s record, using a route plan devised by Keizer. He was ahead of the record pace when he was forced to abandon the attempt because of injuries.

Still, last summer he became the first-ever self-supported finisher of the Nolan’s 14 route across the Sawatch Range, a largely trailless course that traverses 100 miles and 90,000 vertical feet across 14 fourteeners in less than 60 hours.

“I definitely do not have a superhuman ability to endure and suffer,” he told The Denver Post last year. “What I do have is a long history of failure in endurance events. In that long string of failures, I have learned a lot about myself. I know that it is possible continue through what seems like unendurable pain, and I know that it is possible to go without very much sleep, despite what may otherwise seem possible.”

If anyone can break the record, it would be Hamilton, said Telluride mountaineer Ben Clark, who has made a documentary detailing his four thwarted attempts to finish the Nolan’s 14 route.

“He has certainly put the time in. He knows the route, and he knows what expectations are necessary. He has said that a lot of the setbacks he has experienced have taught him quite a bit,” said Clark, who is planning a fifth attempt at the Nolan’s route this summer. “He’s the kind of guy who can hang in there and show up and crush it when the window is right. He’s just an efficient machine.”

This year, Hamilton was plagued by injuries that hindered his training. Then the spring’s heavy snows left peaks buried. Then the monsoon rains arrived early.

“All these ominous signs led me to nearly cancel the attempt and wait for next year, but I was convinced to go ahead and get started and see how it goes,” he wrote.

Sawatch peaks in one day

The challenges have been thrilling for the hundreds if not thousands of Hamilton fans cheering from their computers as they watch his GPS tracker and updates. He had to backtrack up North Maroon Peak after reaching a cliff in his descent. Hamilton scooted across Capitol Peak’s daunting knife-edge at night in the rain to wrap a five-peak 24 hours in the Elk Range. He spent Monday climbing the Sawatch’s Yale, Columbia, Harvard, Oxford, Belford and Missouri peaks before climbing and descending the largely trail-free Huron during the night.

Climbing those Sawatch peaks is an admirable summer goal for a weekend warrior. Hamilton climbed them in a day.

His team — which includes hikers who push him along the trail as well as a support crew who wash his clothes, prep his food and pack fresh backpacks while forging swollen creeks to reach remote trailheads — has been posting pictures of an increasingly weary-looking Hamilton, who pretty much appears as if he’s sleepwalking.

His final day, Wednesday, will begin on Torreys and Grays peaks, then Mount Evans and Mount Bierstadt before rushing over to Longs Peak in Rocky Mountain National Park. He will stop his clock when he reaches 11,259 feet on his descent from Longs, per the rule that each peak or traverse requires 3,000 feet of elevation gain.

Jason Blevins: 303-954-1374, jblevins@denverpost.com or twitter.com/jasonblevins

How Andrew Hamilton did it

June 29: Windom Peak, Sunlight Peak, North Eolus, Mount Eolus, El Diente Peak, Mount Wilson, Wilson Peak

June 30: Mount Sneffels, Handies Peak, Redcloud Peak, Sunshine Peak, Wetterhorn Peak, Uncompahgre Peak

July 1: San Luis Peak, Little Bear Peak, Ellingwood Point, Blanca Peak, Mount Lindsey

July 2: Culebra Peak, Crestone Needle, Crestone Peak, Kit Carson Peak, Challenger Point, Humboldt Peak

July 3: Pikes Peak, Mount Antero, Tabeguache Peak, Mount Shavano, Mount Princeton

July 4: Pyramid Peak, Maroon Peak, North Maroon Peak, Snowmass Mountain, Capitol Peak

July 5: Castle Peak, Conundrum Peak, Mount Elbert, Mount Massive

July 6: Mount of the Holy Cross, Mount Yale, Mount Columbia, Mount Harvard, Mount Oxford, Mount Belford, Missouri Mountain

July 7: Huron Peak, La Plata Peak, Mount Sherman, *Mount Democrat, *Mount Cameron, *Mount Lincoln, *Mount Bross, *Quandary Peak

July 8: *Torreys Peak, *Grays Peak, *Mount Evans, *Mount Bierstadt, *Longs Peak

*-not yet finished as of 3 p.m. July 7