2019 Scarsdale graduate Zach Hoexter scaled Denali last month.

2019 Scarsdale graduate Zach Hoexter scaled Denali last month.

Zach Hoexter knew exactly how he wanted to spend the three weeks between his last final of his junior year at Columbia University and the first day of his investment banking internship: climbing Denali.

Denali in Alaska, formerly Mount McKinley, is one of the famed Seven Summits, a mountaineering challenge to scale the highest mountains on each continent, initially accomplished by Richard Bass in 1985. Denali, on a glacier, fully covered in snow and ice, is the third highest peak among the group at 20,310 feet above sea level, though there are many taller mountains in the Himalayas and the Karakoram in Asia. For reference, Mount Everest in Nepal/China is the tallest at 29,029 feet.

The other five summits are Aconcagua (Argentina), Mount Elbrus (Russia), Mount Kilimanjaro (Tanzania), Puncak Jaya (Oceania) and Vision Massif (Antarctica).

Twenty-one-year-old Scarsdale resident Hoexter has always been active and was a runner in high school. While he and his friends were virtual for college in the fall of 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, they decided to do the virtual New York City Marathon, mapping out a route that included New Rochelle, the Bronx River Parkway path and the Kensico Dam to make up their 26.2 miles. Hoexter ran his first real marathon in March 2021 with former teammate Joey Samuels, completing the Rivanna Greenbelt Marathon in Charlottesville, Virginia, both crossing a few minutes shy of three hours and qualifying for the Boston Marathon, which Hoexter ran on April 18 of this year. He had previously completed the New York City Marathon in November 2021 and Dallas a month later. This fall, Hoexter will compete in Berlin, where he will go for a sub 2:50 time, and Chicago, two weeks apart, which he knows is “cutting it close” as far as recovery and rebuilding strength.

That will leave Hoexter with only London and Tokyo left to compete the six World Marathon Majors.

“I think the marathon seems like the ultimate challenge,” Hoexter said. “To see these cities going all out for these races and the buildup for it as well is a lot more appealing to me than a 10K, 8K or a mile in college, and training for one big challenge, one event, is a lot more motivating once you leave high school than doing a race every weekend.”

Hoexter didn’t want to be defined as “the runner,” and was looking for a challenge to tackle after the Boston Marathon. Over winter break he settled on Denali to “find a new ceiling.”

After graduating from Scarsdale High School in 2019, Hoexter completed the “pretty extensive” 28-day National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) mountaineering course in the North Cascade range in Washington State. There he learned to efficiently pack and unpack equipment and use an ice axe and crampons, which are secured to heavy boots and have metal spikes to dig into ice.

“That set me up pretty well for this,” Hoexter said. “I made a promise to myself that by doing this mountaineering trip I would have to follow through and use those skills. I looked on a couple of websites and found Alpine Ascents International.”

He knew the timing could be an issue at an average of 21 days for a climb and descent — maybe even 25 if the weather is an issue — but he decided to go for it anyway.

“Denali is in the middle of a glacier, extremely hot during the day, freezing at night,” he said. “There’s no help — unless you’re about to die and they will come pick you up in a heli(copter) — there’s no aid stations like there is during a race, no people cheering you on. You’re with your team and you can’t just stop and walk to the side. We saw people getting evacuated every day because of trench foot, gangrene, being blinded by the snow, and there are some people who do die as well.”

What Hoexter had to balance was training for a marathon and scaling a mountain twice the height of and with greater difficulty compared to anything he’d encountered in the Cascades three years earlier. Unable to find any experts who faced similar training overlaps, Hoexter would train at the gym for a couple of hours in the evening with friends and run at night in Central Park and Riverside Drive, while also balancing his schoolwork.

“You can’t wing Boston or Denali because you either won’t finish or you will be stuck on the mountain,” he said. “When people talk about it being about the journey, the training was definitely extremely true.”

Hoexter arrived at the base of Denali on May 14 and departed with three guides and eight other older, more experienced climbers. Armed with a 70-pound backpack and a 55-pound sled, he began scaling the mountain, reaching the peak after 14 days, with many challenges in between, including ice walls, both bitterly cold and blazing heat temperatures, wind, visibility issues and exhaustion throughout the many stages of the mountain.

“It happened to be a nice day with no wind,” Hoexter said. “I couldn’t see it until we were halfway done with the Knife Ridge. I knew this was it. You reach there and see that little circular marker on the ground from the National Geological Survey. You also see there’s literally no place higher than that. The first thing you see are glaciers and mountains as far as the eye can see. We had the best visibility, very few clouds. No people, no towns, no roads, no planes, nothing around you. You’re standing there excited and tired after climbing from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.”

To Hoexter’s surprise they announced they had about 10 or 15 minutes at the peak before beginning to head back down. It was enough time to take some pictures and briefly enjoy the view.

“Now I’ve got to do the other six,” Hoexter said. “I had never thought of that before I was standing there.”

The beginning stretch of the climb was tough for Hoexter, with the sled “perpetually tugging you backwards. Motorcycle Hill was tough as there was one foot path of the steep incline. Other groups were taking too long, so Hoexter’s group went around them to the side, making their own tracks. Leaving the 14,000-foot camp at the Headwall was a 2,400-foot steep climb, part of which was done with fixed lines and tethered together on pure ice. They did that route twice, the first time to cache supplies, the second time with their gear. Then going along the West Buttress was a challenge as they had to wait out 35 mile per hour winds while exposed for two hours before they decided to go for it instead of going back down the Headwall.

“After the first hour you ask yourself, ‘Why am I here? This is so ridiculous,’” Hoexter said. “It hurt to be in the cold at that point and we were doing nothing but sitting there hoping the wind would die down. That was a challenging stretch. That’s what I will remember, sitting there with my team and other expedition teams at the Headwall at 16,400 feet exposed on the ridge. The loud gusts of wind were just smacking into you. There was nothing you could do. That took a lot of mental toughness to get through. You made it that far, so there was no way you were turning around. You think about the marathons and where you are in life and you know you can’t give up this opportunity because you might not get another one again.”

For some of his fellow climbers this was their second time attempting the climb as the success rate is under 60%. One had even made it to high camp, which was at 17,200 feet, another as high as 19,000 feet.

“I couldn’t imagine going all that way and not summiting,” Hoexter said. “I was nervous about that.”

Though it only took two days to get back down Denali as they pulled an all-nighter, it was one of the more exhausting parts of the journey that ended May 31.

“Especially at the end it was just maxing everything out,” Hoexter said. “It was amazing. There’s a part really close to the end — it’s called Heartbreak Hill, ironically, like Boston — and it’s the very last hill before you get to base camp. It’s very tall and very long and that part you have one hill left and I was out of water by that point. I was starting to get a bit dehydrated. It was around 5:45 in the morning and we had pulled the all-nighter. We were trying to get back to make the plane out of there.

“Making that hill you just shell out all the reserves you have left. It honestly felt forever. You look up the hill and you think you see the crest and you’ll do anything you can to get there. You’re walking on flat ground, but it’s just hiding another part of the uphill and another. It literally felt like there was no end to this hill. Then all of a sudden the trip was over.”

At the base of the mountain Hoexter collapsed. The climbers had a few hours to kill before their flight and back in civilization Hoexter treated everyone to pizza, grateful for the opportunity to be “the kid” on the adventure just a couple of days away from starting a summer internship before his senior year of college.

“If you can do five marathons and Denali at 21 years old, it’s about what expectations you have for yourself when you’re 25,” Hoexter said. “That’s something I ask myself, ‘How do I go upwards and make sure I’m not plateauing or flat-lining?’ It’s taking on school and work and life and taking on these challenges. I’m taking lessons from the trip about not giving up and being as efficient as possible with your time and your energy, working hard and working smart and finding the balance between the two.

“People ask, ‘Why?’ and I ask, ‘Why not?’ I think it’s your responsibility to find out whatever maximum capacity you have to do something in whatever sport or challenge it is and once you do find that max, figure out a way to find a training plan or a method to push that an inch further. It builds character and separates you. It helps you find a purpose.”

Two marathons and one summit officially conquered… four marathons and six summits to go.

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Clear to partly cloudy. Low 52F. Winds NW at 10 to 20 mph..

Clear to partly cloudy. Low 52F. Winds NW at 10 to 20 mph.