In his new book, Chasing the Grid: An Ultrarunner’s Physical and Spiritual Journey in Pursuit of the Ultimate Mountain Challenge (VeloPress), Ken Posner chronicles his completion of the Catskill Grid—climbing each of the 35 Catskill High Peaks in every month of the year. That’s 420 summits, a feat that makes most peak-bagging look like a Sunday stroll. Written in the same obsessive cadence as the climbs themselves, the book toggles between the raw detail of ultramarathon suffering (blackened toenails, zombie death marches, nettle stings) and the lofty meditations of a man in search of transcendence.
