The Mountain and Tactical Fitness Crossover with Scott Johnston and Maury Birdwell

Scott Johnston and Maury Birdwell are both incredibly experienced mountain athletes and endurance Coaches for both military selections and people that want to go bigger in the mountains. 

Maury currently holds the fastest known time on the Diamond of Long’s Peak, a 1000’ rock face that climbs at the grade of 5.10 and is usually a 12 hour or longer outing for most parties. He completed it in just 3.5 hours car to car.

Scott is the author of both Training for the Uphill Athlete and Training for the New Alpinism. Those books led to many operators pursuing Tier 1 selection events to begin reaching out to him for training. The people he and his team of coaches have trained for these events have a very high rate of success. He was a nationally competitive swimmer and cross country skier in his collegiate days. In the 1970s and 80s he spent many seasons on Denali

DOD Arctic Strategy: https://media.defense.gov/2024/Jul/22/2003507411/-1/-1/0/DOD-ARCTIC-STRATEGY-2024.PDF 

SFAS QC Success study: “Soldiers that were officers or 18× enlisted (fast-tracked to SFAS), had <1 year of active duty, ≥ bachelor degree, no children, were Ranger school graduates, from the Mountain region, and not married were more likely to be selected (p < .05). There were no statistically significant differences in probability of selection according to age or community of origin.”

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0031938419303063