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MANITOU SPRINGS, Colo.— A Colorado man seeks to break a record for hiking a notoriously steep and difficult trail as many times as he can in a year.

The current record is 1,719 ascents of the Manitou Incline near Manitou Springs.

The Colorado Springs Gazette reports 62-year-old Greg Cummings is now about halfway toward breaking his friend Roger Austin’s record. Cummings is averaging over five ascents and descents a day and has completed the trail about 870 times since January.

The trail is short but climbs nearly 2,000 feet in less than a mile. The trail consists almost entirely of hundreds of steep steps up a mountainside.

Cummings says the challenge is especially difficult because he has Type 1 diabetes.