Fortune..
The annual hike at law firm Quinn Emanuel is part rite-of-passage, part stress test, and not for the faint of heart. Every year, the company flies hundreds of employees to a different location so they can take part in a rather extreme hiking ritual, a kind of company retreat to gather people from far-flung office buildings and build camaraderie.
Last month, more than 250 employees flew to Cusco, Peru, to hike part of the Andes mountain range. The lawyers had two options: a grueling 18-mile overnight hike through the Salcantay Pass in the Andes, which reaches an altitude of more than 15,000 feet, or a slightly less intense 8.5-mile trek to 14,000 feet.
“It’s intense,” says Tigran Guledjian, partner at Quinn Emanuel and co-chair of the firm’s national intellectual property litigation practice, who helps run the hikes and has been attending them for more than 20 years. “You carry your own backpack with your own tent, and your own sleeping bag, and your own food, and you are responsible for yourself. There’s nobody out there who is going to do anything for you, other than your colleagues.”
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