Matheson Brown has been hoping for a world record for years now.

That world record; to summit the highest point in all 50 states of America in record speed.

However, that wouldn’t come without some challenges.

“We just did a 7.8 day road trip where we went to over 30 state high points,” said Ryan Larsen, a Proctor High School alum and Matheson’s training partner. “We didn’t stop the car to sleep at all. One person would drive. The other would sleep in a sleeping bag in the backseat. We only stopped to get out of the car to climb a peak, to get gas, or to go through like a Mcdonald’s drive-through or something.”

Larsen, a Twig, Minnesota native, met Brown in Los Angeles after someone stole all of Brown’s gear. Since then, the two were connected at the hip through all of the world record training.

However, Larsen was bit by a tick during training, and came down with Lyme Disease on Denali, forcing him to be air lifted and brought to a hospital.

Brown, coming all the way from New Zealand, wouldn’t stop though, hitting every point along the way of the map he shared with WDIO in April.

“The dot represents where the highest point in each state is,” said Brown. “The color coordination is made it so green is really easy, yellow is pretty easy, orange is medium to hard, and red’s really hard.”

Something Brown said was a foreshadowing for his journey though.

“The red ones are like, you’ve got to get pretty lucky with the weather. Otherwise, it could go pretty south.”

Unfortunately, that’s exactly what happened.

After facing avalanche risk at Mount Rainier, the challenge was on. Brown and his group had to get going.

The group of four, including his dad, traveled across the country, hitting each state on good pace. The problem though; they had to get Mount Rainier still.

After a flight to the west coast in the remaining hours of the attempt, Brown summited Mount Rainier, completing the attempt in record breaking time, by almost a full day. He finished in 20 days 5 hours and 5 minutes, while the previous record set in 2018 was 21 days 9 hours and 48 minutes.

While the record hasn’t been officially verified, Brown and his troubles along the way are a testament that no mountain is too high to climb.