Sometime in the early hours of July 29, a Safety and Security patrol vehicle crept up to the intersection of Old Tuck Drive and Tuck Mall. The officer inside the vehicle was responding to a noise complaint.
On the grass, three students were seated in Dartmouth cycling skinsuits. They took turns snacking, hugging and shouting. Around them, a ring of 20 onlookers had formed, most of them cheering and snapping photos.
Over the previous 20 hours, Connor Killilea ’26, Jacob Spitzer ’26 and Divik Verma ’26 had ridden a nearly mile-long loop up and down Tuck Drive 250 times, gaining 29,032 feet of elevation in the process. Uncoincidentally, that’s the same height as Mount Everest.
“In the biking community, an Everest is when you pick a hill and ride it over and over again until you reach the height of Mount Everest,” Verma said.
Both he and Killilea had completed Everests individually back in 2020 — in their home states of Minnesota and Pennsylvania — but were inspired to complete the challenge again on Tuck Drive to “get our friends involved and turn it into a fun event,” Verma said.
The three sophomores, all members of the cycling team, sent out an email to around 100 students on July 26, outlining their plan for what they called the “Tuck Drive Everest.” Killilea said they chose the date out of convenience, adding that cycling on a Sunday prevented the street from being packed with partygoers.
The three started at around 4 a.m. on Sunday, July 28 and finished around 12:30 a.m. on Monday, July 29 — although Spitzer clocked in a smidge faster, crossing the finish line about 45 minutes before Killilea and Verma. It was each cyclist’s longest lifetime ride, according to Killilea.
“The rower campers all drove in at like nine or 10 in the morning while we were out there doing laps,” Verma said. “And then they left at five in the evening and they saw us, and we [were] still doing laps. They were probably just like, ‘What the hell?’”
As the three of them pedaled, they “tried very specifically not to count laps,” Killilea said. They turned their screens upside down, not wanting to see what progress they were making as the sun made its full rotation through the sky.
Ricky Mendez ’26, who watched as the cyclists completed the challenge, said he and other supporters — some of whom did a couple laps in support — checked in regularly throughout the day.
“At 3 p.m., I stopped by and they were like, ‘Yeah, probably like nine more hours or something,’” Mendez said, laughing. “That was unbelievable to hear.”
Although the three cyclists remained within a half mile of each other throughout the day, they did not cycle at the same pace, each wanting to pursue the challenge differently. In addition to different pacing, music selection was chief among different strategies.
“I did the first eight hours without music so that once I got the music, it was much better,” Spitzer said.
When he did switch to music, Spitzer went with a 170-hour long playlist comprised of songs of all genres.
“There was techno for one lap, Congo drums for the next one and something funky the next lap,” Spitzer said. “Each lap was very individualized and had its own special quality.”
For Killilia and Verma, repetition of certain genres — bluegrass at one point, then EDM, then hip hop — was the answer. According to Verma, it helped blur all of the painful hours together, producing a sort of mindless thought vacuum.
But Spitzer’s strategy worked well for him, Killilea said.
“When he plugged in, he was a different man,” he said. “He just started lapping us, and we were like, ‘Alright.’”
Whenever the three passed each other — one going up, the other down — they’d give a slight nod of the head, acknowledging the pain they were in and encouraging each other to keep with it.
“I could see when [Verma] switched over to EDM because we’d pass each other going up or down and he’d be bumping his head,” Killilea said.
Around hour 15 or so, Verma and Killilea started riding together. As the sun set and the laps began getting harder, they needed the support, Killilea said.
“Every time on the way up, we would alternate who was leading,” Verma said. “It was nice — it kind of felt like we were sharing the work and digging in to finish it up.”
When the three did hop off their bikes throughout the day, it was only to use the restroom or snack up.
“We had like a big stockpile of snacks and we just ate junk food the whole day,” Spitzer said. “The whole idea is you keep a sugar high the whole day so you can stay awake.”
While the group was sore the next few days, Killilea said he faced more joint pain than muscle aches. The three cyclists had morning class the very next day — and Verma a midterm Wednesday — so lots of sleep was not an option.
When Killilea and Verma finished around 12:30 a.m., the crowd that had convened was equal parts eager to go to bed and eager to see their friends finish, Mendez said. The onlookers also experienced some confusion — potentially causing that noise complaint.
“We didn’t really know when their last lap was going to be,” Mendez said. “Someone kept saying, ‘Oh, like two or three more laps.’ So they’d come up and we’d be cheering like they’d finished, and they’d go right back down.”
The three cyclists admitted that Tuck is not the ideal hill on which to do an Everest — as its five degree incline is not very steep, and the constant turns slow riders down.
“But it’s forgiving,” Verma said. “It’s not like a 20-hour ride where if you crack at hour 12 you have to ride home for eight hours.”
Verma paused, turning to Killilea and Spitzer, and flashed a mischievous grin. Being on campus, the temptation to quit was there — their beds lay just several hundred feet away.
“That was just the devil on your shoulder,” Verma said.
None of them, though, said they even once thought of stopping.
