Oddly enough, one of the toughest challenges for a Naval Academy student doesn’t involve water.
An annual Academy ritual tasks freshman to scale the 21-foot Herndon Monument, an obelisk that’s been covered in vegetable shortening with the goal of placing a sailor’s hat on the very top, according to the Associated Press.
The person who gets the hat to the top of the monument supposedly will be the first admiral in the class.
Roughly 1,300 plebes worked for two hours, 19 minutes and 11 seconds to complete the challenge.
The shortest time to scale the monument, unofficially, is one minute, 30 seconds in 1969.