KEARNS, Utah (ABC4) – Connor Anderson, of Kearns, isn’t your typical 19-year-old. Instead of staying up late with friends, he is conquering mountains. Anderson just broke the record for the fastest climb of the tallest mountains in three states, and if that is not impressive enough – he did it in one day.

Anderson is a trail runner. He can be seen in a video panting, red-faced, covered in sweat, and happier than he has probably ever been. There were no crowds waiting for him. but the energy of his feat is obvious.

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“I did it. I did it, oh my gosh,” he exclaims. “6:26 for a total of 12:26; Oh, thank you, God.”

He not only completed the three peaks in under 13 hours he beat the last known record by over 3 hours.

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Anderson traveled to New England in October of this year with his sights set on the single push record. He had studied the routes and previous records and realized the drive time between the hikes wasn’t overwhelming and decided to go for it.

“I never really thought like, hey, I can totally break this record,” recalled Anderson. “But the more I thought about it and the faster I got, I was like, OK, well, maybe I’ll give some of these a shot.”

He parked his rental car in a parking lot, set his alarm for 4 a.m., and made history the next day. He started out in New Hampshire hiking Mt. Washington, drove to Vermont, and hiked Mt. Mansfield, and then finished in Massachusetts, hiking Mt. Greylock.

Anderson began trail running about two years ago. He had always been into running and had completed a couple of marathons. He started meeting other trail runners and quickly liked what he saw and decided to give trail running a shot.

“Trail running is going to a hiking trail or multi-use trail, or sometimes not even a trail, and power walking or running up the trail or mountain,” Anderson explained. “Lots of times it has to do with getting to the top of certain peaks and summits and then just bombing down that hill as fast as you possibly can.”

Anderson says there is a lot of joy that comes from setting records that can be broken. He is hoping to inspire other trail runners to do the same. He finds the opportunity to keep getting better is all part of the process.

Anderson holds several records and knows there is always someone, like him, out there looking for a record to beat.

“I have two of my records have already been broken that I’ve set, and it’s, at first I thought I was going to be here sad watching it go,” he said. “But, It’s actually pretty cool knowing that somebody set their sights on me, and they’ll beat me, It’s even inspired me to go back and try to beat them again once I get a little bit faster, and so really, the end goal is to get faster.”

He plans to train to do longer distant pushes and break plenty more records in the process.

“I kind of want to go and do the ones that like, people will move their heads and be like, Whoa, that guy just did that,” Anderson said. “So really, when I’m scouring the database, try looking at different trails and looking for ones that actually matter, right? The ones that are that will make me feel like, wow, you really did something.”

Connor says with snow on the ground he will continue to train through the winter months on mountains when he can and in the gym and streets when he can’t. He has a goal to climb Grand Teton in Wyoming next summer. You can follow along as he takes on his next record @summitsigner on Instagram.

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