Afternoon Run

Treadhill

Not enough hours in the day

Golf course with kids

White Mountains Direttissima FKT Attempt Day 3. Note: full description is very long and apparently can only be seen on the web interface.

This day is dedicated to those who trained with me and helped me prepare physically and logistically. Cara Baskin and Bill Tidd particularly came along for a number of cold and snowy/rainy outings. Other human sacrifices to the cold, wet weather this year included Andy MacGibbon, Matt Zanchi, Rick Floyd, and Steve Rosenman who all accompanied me in some pretty miserable conditions! Additionally, Bill provided his very detailed planning spreadsheet from his runs at the 48 - both the unsupported and supported, and we had quite a few exchanges about his time estimate formulae, route variations, and the pros and cons of different prioritizations.

I had a groggier wakeup and slow pack-up. I had some hotspots on my feet that I thought would be okay since I thought it wouldn’t rain much and I’d have mostly dry feet through the day. The idea was to get through the day and the two expected river fords, and I could fix my feet the following morning ready to go the final dry days. This was clearly foolish.

At the Kanc, I went to the parking lot at the switchback to look for my lost mitten shells and leave trash, but found neither the mittens nor a trash can. I then thought about allowing throwing trash away on an unsupported effort, and decided I think it’s a bad idea - I could have thrown my rain jacket, rain pants, tarp, etc in the trash after day 1 to save weight!

I jogged with the heavy pack down the Kanc and just after hitting the trail, my headlamp died. I hadn’t charged it, but forgot how much I had used it already and thought the headlamp was failing. I couldn’t run it from the battery either, which I thought was an advertised feature of the Nitecore headlamp & battery pack. It turns out I just needed to plug the headlamp in after turning it on rather than leaving it plugged in and turning the headlamp back on.

The steep climbs and descents on Osceolas really kicked my ass. I just hadn’t trained on terrain that steep. It drizzled on and off. I was bonky. I made my way to my planned (but unscouted) bushwhack up Tecumseh. It started out remarkably easy as I found an old logging cut that perfectly paralleled my intended line. Eventually, I had to cut steep uphill, and it got harder, but was never very difficult. I felt totally trashed though, and moved very slowly. I was having some issues eating. After bonking my way back down to the base, and trotting the roads down from the ski area, I felt better and ate better. I crossed over to FR 53 heading up toward North Twin Slide and shuffled along, trotting as much of the very smooth dirt road as I could. I was so sleepy that I closed my eyes to try to rest as I trotted. Gentle rain continued to fall. 

When I got to the trail, I made a silly mistake: I had remembered taking some old neglected forest road to get to the bushwhack when I did it with a friend 8 years earlier, so I took the old neglected road straight ahead rather than following the trail signs. I noticed that it appeared to be on the other side of the stream than where I expected to be, but figured I’d cross it soon enough… this led to a roughly 11 minute foolish, schwacky detour. When I finally took the correct trail, I spent quite a while regrouping and filling bottles. My feet hurt, but it was drizzling and I had left my handkerchief on the outside of my pack to dry… instead it got very wet. I had no way to dry my feet so tape might stick, so there wasn’t much to do about it except move on. The trail to the base of North Tripyramid Slide is quite relaxed. The slide in the rain - not so much. I definitely had feet slide and skitter on the slick slabs, but had enough hand holds to keep in control. But I moved slowly and carefully. At least I wasn’t going to fall asleep moving on this!

I saw some people at the summit, and I told them what I was doing and that it’d be on Strava - here it is finally! The Tripyramids summit ridge was more technical and difficult than I remembered, perhaps in part because it was wet. Some folks warned me that the slabs coming off South Tripyramid were slick - I kind of scoffed having come up North Tripyramid slide, but then slipped on a rock and had to take a quick couple of hops and narrowly missed falling quite a long way and taking a ride down the slabs. I took the rest of the slabs very slowly. The Sleepers weren’t as bad as I expected, but I was starting to run low on fluids, since I only had a 2 liter capacity. I made it to Passaconnaway, and my feet really hurt. The rain had finally stopped and the wind was helping dry off the rock. I sat at the summit with my feet out of my shoes and socks, wiped them off, and let them dry. I taped the hotspots as well as I could, though I’m not a foot taping expert as I’ve almost never had to do it. 

The tape helped, and I found a small water trickle on the Passaconnaway loop that helped my dwindling water supplies. The steep descents with the heavy pack hurt. This was the first day with no pack drops. I managed again to trot some of the lower sections of the trail out to the Kanc. By the time I was out to the road, the sun was fully out and it felt quite warm. After trotting down the road to the Sawyer Pond Trail Head, I took my shoes off to ford the river, and took some time on the other side drying my feet and filtering water. It’s good that I did, because as soon as I was on the Sawyer Pond Trail, the apocalyptic mosquitoes set in. This lit a bit of a fire under me though - the adrenaline rush of swatting mosquitoes constantly while trying to jog with my 25+ lb pack made me forget about all my aches and pains and I just “ran”. I probably killed around 200 mosquitoes, just on my forearms. I kept moving as fast as I could, and made pretty good time through the 5ish miles of the Sawyer Pond Trail. Given how smooth this trail is, that’s what I needed to do anyway, and I have the mosquitoes to thank for making me really focus and move well through this section and make up some time from my really slow trek through the Sandwich Range. Since I needed to use water to swallow my snacks, it was tough to eat in this section. To avoid having to ford another river, I took the road bridge and short bushwhack to get to the old FR85 “trail”. It was probably delightful doubletrack 20 years ago, but now it’s fully overgrown and this segment had the most bushes whacked on the route. Thanks to the scouting effort with Bill, I knew what I was getting into, and tried to keep mentally calm while smashing through the overgrowth. This put me at the base of Carrigan just before sunset. I had wanted to be here at least an hour earlier so I could descend the Desolation Trail in the light, but that was out the window. I filled bottles, took a big dose of carbs and set in for the long climb. I hit the ridge having had my headlamp on for a while, but still could see some color on the horizon. I was definitely tired and was tempted to lay down at the campsite at the summit, but really wanted to make it down the Desolation Trail before sleeping. My heuristic  daily splits had me ending after Shoal Pond, but I could see I was going to hit about 45 miles at the bottom and decided that was enough. My feet hurt and the taping had been helping, but it wasn’t really enough. I had hoped to get through all the river crossings and wetness of Shoal Pond Trail before letting my feet and shoes dry out a bit overnight to set myself up for a dryer day the following day, but it would’ve meant I didn’t get a start on the following day until the sun was already up. I found a good site next to the trail, set up, cleaned my feet, and laid myself down to sleep.

Top Sports

Joffrey Peters

Direttissima Day 3: Soggy Sandwich

13 Photos

1 Comment

Splits

Sign up to view more activities from Joffrey Peters

Afternoon Run

Treadhill

Not enough hours in the day

Treadhill

Golf course with kids

Want to see more?

The #1 app for runners and cyclists

Sign Up for Free. Track your progress and reach goals. Join 100 million active people on Strava.

See More from Joffrey