Has anyone ever everested (or attempted to everest) on a uni?
I don’t mean riding near the actual Mount Everest, which would be far more interesting and enjoyable. I mean ascending a total of 8848 vertical metres on a unicycle on a single ride without sleep.
I’ll have a look at where I can possibly do that. Not much hills in my area, I might have to climb the same 88 times.
A lot of the listed rides, especially the ones with short overall distance, have hundreds of laps listed to make up the total climb.
All but one of those climbs will have a descent - find a brake that won’t overheat? Interesting question if learning to freewheel or spinning at near neutral power would be lower stress.
The math is brutal though - a near-minimum (for a bike) 88 km ride would need to have an average grade around 20%, since the descending half of the distance doesn’t count.
Or a mile century of laps on a 10% grade.
Or one could try to do something steep - Fargo 188 times?
There are of course no viable non-lap courses on Earth. The Everest comparison is also a bit stretched since the starting point for climbing the mountain is not sea level, but the part that is climbed has much less available oxygen than the routes most of these cycling attempts are going to be made on.
Still, count me out.
Interesting… The list includes a few 8x Alpe d’Huez’s which came to mind for me pretty quickly; also a couple of 4x Col du Galibier’s and a 5x Mont Ventoux, Stelvio, Mortirolo, etc. If I were to travel that far to do any of those legendary climbs, and if I had the legs for it, more than one rep might almost be sensible.
A more realistic approach might be to imitate the days needed for climbing everest. They don’t climb all those meters in one day after all, they make camps along the way.
Imitating that you could do a tour in the Andes/alps/pyrenees/local hilly area and plan the route to match the vertical meters of everest:)
To enhance the experience you could throw on a backpack, put in a light mountaineering tent and other mtn climber equipment:)
Also end the tour on highest peak there is.
They make several acclimatization climbs which takes weeks of preparation, however, when it’s time to summit most will do so in a span of 2 or 3 days from base camp depending on weather.
I think Aspen Mike has done that much climbing in a morning - but, to be fair, he did have to delay his lunch.
If you’re doing it with multiple climbs, why do you have to ride down? Since we’re not counting the down, and it’s only a reset so you can continue going up, why not take a shuttle vehicle? Everest climbers also rest on the way up. 
I know Aspenmike has ridden up Mauna Loa in Hawaii (~14,000’) in a day, but it was a very long ride distance-wise, so not necessarily possible to repeat without sleep. For him it would probably be more of a case of going up one of his favorite local climbs (or a series of close together ones) closer to Aspen.
More impressive (to me) is the fact he didn’t use fixed ropes.
Surely everesting a unicycle would be not much harder than everesting a bike. In terms of speed most climbers would be going in low gear on a bike also. I think a shuttle on the way down would help out also, or you need to be able to use your brakes well.
The other thing that may useful to consider is whether or not you do a short steep accent or a long gradual one. A long gradual one would be easier to ride up but without a shuttle would take a lot of time do descent. A steep one should be a much shorter decent time (as long as you had a brake).
The Cog Railroad on Mt. Washington in New Hampshire climbs about 1100 meters; it has been descended on a rail sled in an alleged 2 minutes and 45 seconds.
Alas the road with the annual bike race in which unicycles have participated is on the opposite side.
Also the rail sliders are long banned.
But find a hill with an alpine slide installation?
If you’re not shuttling (which you wouldn’t do on a bike, because there’s no need) you’ll be spending a lot longer on the descent than somebody on a bike - and unlike the person on the bike you’ll be putting energy into balancing. Personally I also climb a lot faster on a bike - I appreciate there are some here who can climb a lot faster than I can on a unicycle, but they would probably also climb faster on a bike.
This presents an interesting theoretical question. Anecdotally, climbs are where a lot of moderately strong unicyclists finally get to show our capability compared to the most casual bicyclists who could on other terrain fly by with benefit of gears or freewheels.
But conceivably there’s a hill grade where an optimally skilled unicyclist on an optimally chosen unicycle could have an efficiency gain over the same athlete hauling up a bike. Apparently there exists one were running on foot matches biking (at the point of climbing a ladder, this becomes obvious).
But while eliminating the second wheel, frame members, and transmission might not be the most effective 10 lbs of weight needing hauling up the hill to personally save, it is the most enticing.
There is no hill grade at which a unicycle is more efficient than a bike. The unicycle efficiency deficit is greater or lesser at different grades, mostly depending on the effective gear ratio (which is selectable on a bike but not on a uni).
I wouldn’t say Everesting on a unicycle is impossible. But it’s probably harder than anything that’s been done on a unicycle.
Mont Ventoux has been done four times, 6000m.
When the hill grade is ideal for the unicycle’s lever ratio and steady enough and the rider skilled enough that changes in effort for balance are insignificant, then for a fit rider with no extra pounds of their own, the fact that it weighs 8-10 lbs less that have to be hauled up the hill is an efficiency advantage.
It may be true that a bicycle configuration with its handlebar lets the rider exert more torque and hence do more work; but that’s effectiveness of the combination, not efficiency of the cycle.
A carefully sized unicyle drive plus a small stability wheel (or even two to create a trike) and frame to support that and handlebar could likely be the ideal “reduced to only what helps” constant hill configuration.
And clearly there’s a grade where all of these loose out to walking.
Ok, there are obvious things :
Unicycle:
Pro: light
Cons:fixed ratio
Bike:
Pro:a huge amount of gears
Cons:heavy
Since you can put a handlebar on a unicycle they both also have the advantage of a lever.
But there is something that unicycles have got (especially with a handlebar) that bikes haven’t : on a unicycle you can use your body+unicycle weight to make it easier to pedal by pushing the balance point further.
On flat it’s obvious, when you are very close to the UPD limit you get more speed and cranks torque becomes much lower, it’s obvious on a 36er, but on uphill you can still take profit of gravity to help you a bit.
you don’t have this option with a bike.
Now, I’m not sure you can take much profit of this phenomenon on very steep hills.
I was thinking about unicycle everesting for quite a time, but that is definitely too far from my abilities. I was thinking more about Rysy’ing (Rysy being highest point of Poland at 2499 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rysy) or Mount Blanc’ing (4,808 m) first.
Unicycles don’t weigh 8-10lbs less than decent road bikes. In particular, their rotating weight is higher than the kind of road bike you’d do hill climbing on, because you’d use 700x18-23 rims and tires, which suck for unicycling.
And any advantage of reduced weight is overwhelmed by the vector forces. The pedal force on a bike translates very directly into forward motion. On a uni, not only do you have to counterbalance backwards, but the wheel wobbles also, so more of your force is going to the left and right. This is especially pronounced on steep hills.
A reasonably-skilled rider will always be faster on a reasonably-configured bike than on a unicycle, regardless of grade.
In fact, they do. The research that went into that comment found a lot of indications of 17 lbs plus, with under 15 considered to create tradeoffs, yes, under 14 lbs is possible. It’s also possible to make a carbon unicycle for an ideal hill, removing the strength reserve normally there for all-around riding.
Rotating vs fixed weight only matters in starting and stopping and changing approach; I did specifically mention a steady hill. Actually, for steady progress a high rotating weight is ideal, as the flywheel helps to even out the pedal cycle.
Terry built up a unicycle with a 700 road bike wheel, likely for the larger end of such tires , but it’s an open question if his one weighed more than a bike’s two.
Erroneous idea - you do not, unless you’ve made a mistake that needs correction.
Unclear that this is actually going to matter much; a bike cranking hard wobbles too, though it may not follow as sinuous a path. A wheel (or bike gear) sized to the hill would be one allowing a normal cadence for rider efficiency, rather than an extreme cranking one, so wobbling is likely to be fairly minor. But note that a sinuous path is just a micro zigzag, actual street-wide zig-zag is used as a strategy by some with either wheel count, presumably because they either don’t have a low enough gear, or because ascending straight up with available energy output would imply rolling rate too low to achieve lateral stability via the usual micro-steering; for the purposes of the original question, that would be a poorly chosen hill.