Subject: JMT Run (part one - long) Date: Sun, 6 Aug 2000 19:00:05 -0700 From: Buzz Burrell To: "Ultra List" This is a long personal report of Peter Bakwin and my recent run on the John Muir Trail. The JMT is a trail of incomparable nature. It's 223 miles of pure single track - no jeep roads, and amazingly, no road crossings of any kind. Most of it is in wilderness areas, with the entire southern half being very high with no easy access. Our plan was to begin in the wee hours of July 31, summit Mt Whitney, the highest mountain in the lower 48, and continue almost non-stop in one huge push to the halfway point of the trail for our first night's sleep. That first half is the highest, remotest, and has most of the elevation gain. So if we survived that the hardest part would be done. The third day would be a "death march", as we hung on until the 3/4 point, a place called Red's Meadow, which has the first road access and is a traditional refueling point for hikers and fastpackers alike, and where we could refuel as well. The fourth day we would be totally exhausted, but the thinking was we would then "smell the barn", and with shameless use of caffeine and whatever stimulates we could think of, we'd hang on to finish in exactly 96 hours - 4 days - flat, thus surpassing the previous efforts by a significant margin. Some of the best trail runners from the west have given the JMT a go; I harbored no fantasies that we were more fit than these illustrious people. Instead, Peter and I adopted a unique "balls-to-the-wall" strategy: we would carry almost no gear and sleep very little, thus moving very fast. The down side to our plan was the minimal margin for safety or error. The result? Our plan - particularly the "balls-to-the-walls" and "exhaustion" part - worked out all too much as expected. Then the end was totally unexpected. There was a fair amount of foreboding to the trip. Driving out the air was hot, dry, and continually filled with smoke from the Colorado/Utah border to the Sierras. The vistas were clouded by smoke, smoke hung low in the valleys at sunrise, and Lone Pine, the last town, was an oppressive place, sweltering in the 105 degree heat with an orange glow in the scorched air. We started at 1:14 am, and hit Whitney Summit in 5 hours. Our legs felt good as we zipped by the occasional backpacker, eating up the miles and glorifying in the freedom - and vulnerability - our light packs gave us so far away from any support. Although we studiously read all previous accounts of JMT runs, a number of things still surprised us mightily: 1. It was really hot and dry! Even though we were very high, continuously above timberline, the trail was dusty, the air was hot, there was little snow, and we had to be careful about water. Acknowledging it was a record setting drought year, we were still shocked at how desolate the High Sierras are. Peter said it felt like we doing Eco-Challenge Morocco. 2. The trail was actually fairly easy. I expected to love the Sierras, but instead felt great appreciation for our home state of Colorado - the Appalachians are soaking wet and they don't believe in constructing switchbacks back East, while the Sierra's are too dry and the switchbacks are annoyingly gradual. I felt Colorado was in between, "just right", like the Mama Bear's Porridge. We started early in order to make the subsequent checkpoints at the most fortuitous times, but this might have been a mistake, as we soon were ahead of schedule but sleepy - a continuing issue. We flopped out on the ground twice that night for catnaps totaling 1.5 hours. We fully expected cold nights to be a problem, but instead it was almost too hot to sleep, and mosquitoes were far more of an issue. As night beset us the second day, we realized we were running into our THIRD period of darkness with little sleep or rest. "Whose idea was this anyway" we joked, as the intensity of 107 almost non-stop miles and 5 major mountain passes weighed heavily on us. Blake Wood called the JMT "two back-to-back Hardrocks", and this point was not lost on us, as we wondered how the hell we were going to get up and do this again. Indeed, Blake's report on his JMT run came back to our thoughts many times, and we thought about his outstanding - and solo - effort frequently. His report was excellent, and we discovered that we agreed 110% with everything he said. The JMT was HARD. It was long and lonely. It was not to be taken lightly. And even though we were blazing away at a pace faster than his, not for a minute did we feel we were exceeding anything he accomplished. Rather, we were building upon his and all other's who had shared their experience with us. Our contribution as I see it, was to raise the bar a notch higher by implementing trail race intensity in a mostly unsupported multi-day backcountry environment. My son meet me at the halfway point. Seeing someone who loves you adds a very important quality to the support. My son Galen, and Peter's friend John humped in SEVENTEEN MILES- one way - to re-supply us! This was "aid station support extraordinaire". It would have been possible for Peter and I to have not re-supplied until Red's Meadow, but that would have introduced further misery into the experience, and backpackers traditionally re-supply at this spot on the trail as well. At any rate, we were very happy to see them! After a deluxe 4 hours of sleep, we were off again. Our plan called for us to not arrive or leave any camp except in the middle of the night. At this point, the nature of the trip became evident: 1. The JMT was going to be a "sufferfest". My feet were killing me. I have probably gotten 5 blisters my whole life, and none while spending 12 days running the Colorado Trail just last year; I had at least five blisters right now - with still 2 days to go! My toenails were being slowly pushed off my toes from the swelling underneath; putting on shoes was agony. 2. We had both gotten sinus infections from the dust and smoke. I had cracked and bleeding lips from the heat, dryness, sun, and who-the-heck-knows-why-these-things-happen. A number of years ago I rode my bike from Kathmandu to Lhasa, over 3 passes exceeding 17,000 feet, and never so much as experienced a chapped lip. I wondered if I was getting too old for this sort of thing. 3. Here it is in a nutshell: Imagine how you feel at Mile 80 of a 100 mile trail race. Imagine being able to finish it because you have total aid, total support, and know that in 20 miles you will be done, and the hot shower and good food will be waiting. Now imagine having that exact same feeling of tiredness - and knowing you have TWO MORE FULL DAYS of feeling like that before you are finished ... with nothing to eat but beef jerky and cold instant mashed potatoes, out on a wilderness trail often in the dark, and nobody to take care of your problems but yourself. At Midnight at the end of the third day, we straggled into Red's Meadow, which is the first place with road access (the only other is Tuolumne Meadows, near the end). Blake described this section as miserable, with thick dust ground up from the soft pumice rock. I think this guy has a real positive attitude! Red's has a large commercial pack operation, guiding dozens of horse and mule trips up the trails. Since it looked like it hadn't rained in about 300 years, the trail consisted of 4" of talcum-like powder mixed in with hundreds of pounds of dried animal feces, all of which is churned up by the hooves into a fine dust that hovers in the air - and is inhaled by hapless runners. By midday, our nasal passages were bloody from the irritation and infection. This is when our attempt got really intense, and really clear. We now were in sync with Blake, being at the same spot with only one day to go as he - except we got there in three days instead of his four. This would be our easiest day while it was his longest. So we felt guardingly optimistic... we began to key off of him, calculating that all we had to do is match his time on this last day, and we would arrive at the finish in the terrific time of 4 days flat. Unfortunately, besides being exhausted and beat up, this schedule also meant we had to go off with only 2.5 hours sleep. But we set no alarm, awoke naturally, and at 3:15 am I hear Peter say, "Hey Buzz, want to go for a run?" Off into the darkness we went. (cont part two)