A Tale of Two Traverses

Deux mille treize.  A year replete with wandering, mountain romance, sheer rock faces, rainy mountain runs, and just lots of rain in general.  A year of porch-sittin' sunsets in West Virginia and blustery, biting sunrises from the ridges of the White Mountains.  A winter of moonlit night-time runs and hikes to summit the highest points in New Hampshire, a spring to challenge skin's grip on wet rock, a summer of sweltering confusion, and an autumn of crystal clear solutions.  It's been a wild ride from the general life perspective, but conspicuously lacking in one important way: too few ultra-distance runs!

Back in May, I squeaked in a 50km run through the hills and roads near my summer job in Riverton, WV.  Then, nothing.  No motivation and few opportunities to test the legs until the onset of a gorgeous New England autumn, during which I ran mountains as much as I could in-between a 50 hour per week teaching schedule.  What culminated from those passionate nighttime and weekend runs was a two-week spree of classic, difficult White Mountain ridge running.

First to fall: the rarely pursued Mahoosuc Traverse.  Thirty miles of the Appalachian Trail through and across the entire Mahoosuc Range in western Maine and northern New Hampshire, which according to many AT thru-hikers, contains the single hardest mile of the entire trail (Mahoosuc Notch).  When run in a southerly direction, the tramper will accumulate nearly 11,000 ft. of elevation gain before being spit out near downtown Gorham, NH.  The Mahoosucs are often hiked in a three or four day stretch, but single-push efforts for the traverse date all the way back to 1927.  The fastest-known time for the Mahoosuc Traverse was recorded by White Mountain legend Chris Goetze in 1958 (8h06m).

Given the conditions, my Mahoosuc Traverse effort went extremely well - I was in the clouds almost all day, and the endless rock slabs across the ridge were often covered in seeping water or moss-slime.  Despite this and some upper leg cramping issues towards the end of the day, I made the full stretch in 9h09m, about one hour slower than the fastest known time.  A few extra gravel road miles were tacked on so that I could get above the 50k threshold.  I'll let the pictures tell the story....

About a week and a half later, I had an opportunity to hike the Presidential Traverse with my buddy Nate Fry.  I had made the traverse in the winter of 2012, but this would be my first time across the ridge without snow.  Unfortunately, old man winter decided to blow his first breaths early, and we were to find ice and snow on the higher parts of Mts Washington and Adams, so trail runners were left behind in favor of mountaineering boots.  This ultimately led to a lot of ankle pain and significantly slower travel, but we managed a stellar day through lots of cloud cover and occasional blowing snow/ice/rain (snrine?).  Any day on the Presidential Ridge is a good day!

 

 I'm currently sitting tight back in West Virginia for a few days, but my feet are twitchy....what will be next?  I'm hoping to get in a really big effort before the year swallows itself whole, but we'll see how things unfold....