• Daria Bishop
• Mark Kelley

Even an expert hiker can take a tumble. Mark Kelley is more seasoned than most, so on a recent mild, sunny day on a flat trail, he was quick to point out an icy patch. "Don't fall," he cautioned. "That's one thing I've learned: You can fall anywhere. I've fallen everywhere on the mountain. It's inevitable."

Kelley has had his share of slips and falls, both metaphorically and in real life, but he's the sort of person who focuses on getting back up again. Over the past 10 years, the Burlington resident has reached the summits of Mount Mansfield and Camel's Hump 1,787 times. For no reason other than the sheer joy of it, he keeps going back to those same two mountains again and again. No other hills need apply.

Kelley's climb count began a decade ago, when he was 48 and in prime midlife-crisis mode. His mother had passed away when she was that age, and the survivor's guilt from living longer than she did weighed on him. Add that to job dissatisfaction and the end of a long relationship, he said, and "I was in a rut. I hit a wall, and I just was not feeling good about myself."

Already a casual hiker, Kelley was descending Mount Mansfield one morning in early 2012 when he made the decision to do the same trail 99 more times that year. "That's where this whole odyssey began," he said. His original intention wasn't to make the hikes his life's pursuit, but over time, it just happened. Though they began as a physical challenge, the hikes soon became something more spiritual.

In the early days, Kelley timed himself. Initially, his goal was to "bang them out," he said, and do each hike faster than the last. "It was fine for a while, but then it got to be too intense."

Age, fear of injury and the realization that adding a competitive edge to something that was increasingly more mental than physical led him to new priorities. "I'm trying to make it more sustainable," he said. "I'm trying to make it more holistic and be more involved in my surroundings."

Now that he's not sprinting up the mountain, Kelley, who has kind eyes, salt-and-pepper hair, a beard, and a ready laugh, has more time to pay attention, both internally and externally.

"I take in the sights, the sounds, my animal interactions, my human interactions. I feel like I'm really in the moment, and for me it's cathartic," he said. "It ticks off all the boxes: mental, emotional, spiritual well-being. Any way you want to put it, I hit all those moments on the mountain."

Even when Kelley's in this Zen-like zone, his hikes aren't leisurely wanderings with a picnic lunch and a bluebird on his shoulder. He called them "a cross between a hard hike and a trail run."

Back when he was pushing it, he'd make it up and down Mount Mansfield in an hour; these days, he tackles the Laura Cowles Trail, which starts in Underhill State Park, in about an hour and fifteen minutes. He does Mansfield's Sunset Ridge loop and Camel's Hump's Burrows Trail in an hour and a half.

(Alltrails.com, the hiking website, rates both trails "challenging" and estimates the round-trip 4.5-mile Laura Cowles hike at three hours and 32 minutes, and the 5.3-mile Burrows Trail at three hours and 41 minutes.)

On days when everyone else is in bed with the covers over their heads, Kelley, whose day job is driving for the Vermont Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired, is the most juiced to get out the door and up the mountain. "I'm one of those weird people, because I actually really like the extreme-weather days," he said, "because I know that it's kind of like cheating; no one else will go on those days, and invariably you will have the trail to yourself."

Kelley said solitude is precious to him and might be the reason for all the hiking. He hikes alone 99.9 percent of the time and prefers it that way. "It really is all about my headspace," he said. "It's my sanctuary; it's where I go to figure stuff out and process."

• Daria Bishop
• Mark Kelley

Covering the same ground over and over again might sound boring, but Kelley said his familiarity with every tree branch and bend in the trail actually allows him to notice how profoundly different each day can be. The mountain is like a spouse or a best friend. The more you know it, he said, the more you're tuned in to its subtle shifts and nuances.

"I have never once felt like I wanted to do anything else," Kelley said of hiking other mountains. "People ask me that all the time: Why just these two? I have never once been bored."

He said he notices everything from the new position of a rock to changes in flora and fauna from season to season. "The thing that's so great about it is that it's the same thing every [time]," he said. "But it's never the same at all."

Kelley has also noticed the long-term changes of the climate crisis. When he began hiking in earnest a decade ago, he said, the snowpack in late winter was still significant. Now, he said, it's more likely that the trails will be difficult to use because frequent thaws develop an ice base that's hard to navigate.

"You could hike a solid two months in the winter with an occasional spring thaw," he said. "It's rare to go three weeks now without some kind of catastrophic weather event that will decimate the trail."

Where some experts can become overly confident or cocky, Kelley gives off a relaxed vibe.

These are things that don't bother Kelley on the mountain trails: people wearing earbuds; people hiking with enough gear to conquer Mount Everest; a troop of Vermont National Guard volunteers; bears, skunks, porcupines and coyotes; people who take selfies while doing Instagrammable things at the summit. Kelley wants everyone to enjoy the mountain, even if he doesn't necessarily want to see them when he's out there.

These things do bother him: littering, the climate crisis and bushwhacking off-trail, which can harm a mountain.

Even Kelley's approach to gear is laid-back. On a sunny, late-winter day, he gestured to his thin mid-layer jacket and gray athletic pants. "What you see is what I wear," he said. "I bring my car keys and my smartphone. That's all."

When it's especially cold, Kelley adds gloves and a hat. Even in feet of snow, his footwear of choice is Altra Escalante 2.5 running shoes, sometimes with spikes strapped on for hiking over ice.

"They are lightweight and very flexible," he said of the shoes. "They have a low drop, which keeps me in contact with the ground, and they have minimal cushioning. They also have virtually no tread and no lugs, which I find works best on wet or lichen-covered rocks." He goes through two pairs a year.

A life crossroads can lead someone to decisions they might later regret; looking outward to fix something that's broken inside is a risky move. For Kelley, it paid off.

"That may be the biggest piece of this whole thing," he said. "Nothing has ever given me the joy that I have from this. This is my passion. This is what I want to do."

Even when Kelley is crawling on an iced-over rock face and the wind is blowing him sideways, he said, he's having the time of his life.

"You're a self-contained world," he said. "For me, it's a happy world. I'm living my life on my terms, and what could be better than that?"