“North Carolina has a lot of ‘needles’ to climb over,” Meltzer said. “With North Carolina comes a feeling of being closer to the end. I was finally beginning to get a whiff of the barn.”  

The hike was Meltzer’s third attempt to break the elusive record. 

The film, Karl Meltzer: Made To Be Broken, is streaming on Red Bull TV at www.redbull.com.