Read my detailed report here.
Not a race, but worthy of a highlighted report. I ran/hiked the Uinta Highline trail from Leidy Peak (northwest of Vernal) to Hayden Pass (near Mirror Lake) east to west. In 2007 I did 65 of these 78.5 miles with Matt Watts in 30 hours. This time I did then entire trail solo.
What an adventure. It is so remote. The only hikers I saw were near Kings Peak. Other than that I saw a Forest Service guy at mile 27 and a sheep herder at mile 42.
It was a tough, tough run. It is impossible to maintain a fast run because of all the obstacles, hundreds of creek crossings, lots of marshes, mud bogs, and trails with bowling ball or bigger rocks. You get a good pace going and are quickly brought to a slow run/walk around the obstacles. If you run too fast, you also lose the trail because it is very faint in so many areas. But still I covered it all in 33:19 which can be posted as the record. My motivation for posting speed records is to get it documented so someone else can try to break it. I also broke the record for the section of the trail from Chepeta to Hayden. Did it in 28:33.
What is amazing, is that I only covered 18 miles during the night! I had to climb three major passes in the dark and lost the trail dozens of times. Without my GPS and my waypoints, I would have had to stop for the night. With maps it is impossible to navigate many sections during the night. When I would lose the trail, instead of going back, I would just bushwack to my next waypoint, usually within a half mile and then pick up the trail again. Trail markers are tough to see at night. Elevation grinded me to slow hikes above 11,500 feet. My entire run was between 9,950 and 12,500.
The mosquitos were blood thirsy starting at mile 32. I really regretted not bringing spray. I probably was bit 100 times before a hiker near Kings Peak let me use his spray. I also stopped to help this group because a boy of about 12 was throwing up repeatedly. His father didn't know anything about electrolytes and they had only been drinking water. I left them with some Succeed caps. I hope they helped because they still had a long way to go and only a few more hours of sunlight.
My last 15 miles or so were a death march. My feet was very sore from the rough trail. I couldn't slow to take care of them because I would be eaten alive by the bugs.
After the run, I washed up the best I could and hitched a ride to Kamas with some guys were were running an aid station for the bike race Tour De Park City. Nice guys. They were flabergasted to hear about my adventure. I then called my wife and she drove up to take me home. On Sunday we spent the entire day retrieving the car left back at the eastern trailhead.
Well, I'll write a detailed run report sometime this coming week. Even though the distance was less than 80 miles, it felt like a 100-mile race effort, a slow one. The GPS showed 13,000 feet of climbing. There was probably several thousand more. As far as toughness goes, this is easier than Wasatch 100. But this course is much slower, just impossible to run fast.
My GPS track across the Uintas:
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