Ryder Hesjedal beats the boss!

Ryder Hesjedal recently made an attempt at beating boss Jonathan Vaughter’s 2 hr 38 min. record up Mount Haleakala in Hawaii. Vaughters set the record in 1993 as part of the Cycle to the Sun event. As you can tell from our headline, he did it. You can read the story at Gamin’s website and watch the video on Ryder’s site.If you want to get real geeky, you can look at the data from his Garmin computer. I’d love to hear Mr. Vaughters comment on this (he’s commented here once before). I’d like to think he’s happy that he has a strong, determined climber on his squad.

If you’re not familiar with Haleakala, it is on Maui and it’s one of the volcanoes that make up the chain of Hawaiian Islands. The route to the top basically goes from sea level to the summit of over 10,000 feet. It’s otherworldly at the top with some very rare and unusual vegetation being the only thing that grows there. My wife and I drove up to the top near sunset. We arrived with just enough time to look into the crater and then enjoyed a beautiful sunset and some excellent stargazing before driving back down.