Over the final two weeks of July, Erin Ton set out to achieve a mountaineering feat that no woman had attempted in Colorado’s high country. She both succeeded and failed, and created a storm of controversy in her wake.

Beginning on July 16, the 25-year-old Boulder adventure athlete went on a ferocious mission to reach the summit of all of Colorado’s 14,000-foot peaks in record time, entirely unassisted. If she succeeded, Ton believed she could not only surpass the longstanding women’s 14ers speed record set by Danelle Ballengee — who, in reaching the summit of 55 of the 14ers in 14 days, 15 hours, 49 minutes in 2000, is the only woman ever to attempt such an endeavor — but also potentially surpass the unsupported fastest known time, or FKT, of 14 days, 17 hours, 33 minutes set last year by Minnesota athlete Daniel Hobbs.

Beginning with remote 14,089-foot Windom Peak on July 16, Ton zig-zagged across the state’s seven mountain ranges numerous times in a flurry of hiking, trail running and scrambling — driving herself between trailheads in a borrowed Jeep Wrangler — and eventually reached the summit of 57 peaks. She covered 365 miles on foot with 159,356 feet of cumulative elevation gain in exactly 14 days, 10 hours. 

She successfully reached more 14er summits faster than Ballangee did, and she became the first woman to do it without any assistance. 

But there was one major hitch: There are 58 named peaks above 14,000 feet in elevation in Colorado, not 57. 

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