Back for the 4th year, is the Fastest Known Time of the Year Award. What is the most interesting, bold, innovative, and well, fast, FKT this year?
We received 641 new FKT submissions in 2019 (they are still coming in)! We sorted those out to 19 exceptional ones for ladies and 20 for the gents. Please take a look - the links are hot and take you to great info and sometimes gripping trip reports.
Our panel of 30 FKT Voters, with a Gender, Geographic, and Age balance, will vote on these in the next week, with the FKTOY Awards being announced the first week in January.
Also listen to Episode 65 of the podcast with Peter Bakwin, discussing the trends we've seen in 2019, and what might be coming in 2020.
YOUR comments are welcome - did we miss anything? What is inspiring you?
Female nominees
Male nominees
| Name | Route | Time |
|---|---|---|
| Mike Wardian | Washington & Old Dominion Trail (VA) | 5h 6m 10s |
| Luke Bollschweiler | S.C.A.R. (TN, NC) | 14h 28m 33s |
| Kevin Hadfield | Kokopelli Trail (CO, UT) | 1d 9h 21m 23s |
| Karl Egloff | Denali (AK) | 11h 44m |
| Tom Goth | Mt Shasta (CA) | 1h 35m 26s |
| Bill Tidd | New Hampshire 4000 Footers (NH) | 6d 7h 3m |
| Ryan Atkins | Adirondack Great Range Traverse (NY) | 5h 8m 12s |
| Christof Teuscher | Cougar Traverse (WA) | 5d 17h 52m 16s |
| Jeff Garmire | Long Trail (VT) | 5d 23h 48m |
| Ryan Atkins | Adirondack 46 High Peaks (NY) | 3d 5h 52m |
| Andre Michaud | Colorado Trail (CO) | 8d 23h 16m |
| John Maxwell | Wonderland Trail (WA) | 22h 23m 3s |
| Jason Hardrath | Cascades Trifecta (WA, OR) | 19h 28m 5s |
| Jason Hardrath | Rainier Infinity Loop (WA) | 2d 7h 40m 52s |
| Jordan Fields | Presidential Traverse (NH) | 3h 42m 38s |
| Ryan Tetz | Norman's 13 (CA) | 3d 16h 33m |
| Joey Campanelli | Wasatch Ultimate Ridge Linkup (UT) | 15h 28m |
| David Ayala | Wind River High Route (WY) | 2d 3h 35m 24s |
| Kyle Richardson | Third Flatiron (Boulder, CO) | 30m 26s |
| Josh Perry | Arizona Trail (AZ) | 14d 12h 21m |
Comments
It's an honor to be on the list! And motivation to come up with another good one for next year ;)
Renee, you were the first woman to do the CA 14ers basically alone - topping that next year will be hard! (BTW, voting is 1/2 done, and your FKT is being noticed).
Oh wow! Thanks for the inclusion on this fantastic list. 2020 is going to be even bigger... keep up the great work FKT and keep up the great work everyone doing inspiring things!
Here is a link to a blog post about the Kokopelli that didn’t end up in the route description: http://independencerunandhike.com/2019/05/kevin-hadfield-sets-fastest-known-time-on-the-kokopelli-trail/
-Kevin
Thanks Kevin! Kokopelli is such a good early season route. I've run the Loma to Dewey half, and biked it twice (easier :-)
I’d have to vote for Alex Elizabeth’s FKT of the Superior Hiking Trail. She had to endure the most ridiculous and horrible conditions I’ve ever heard of while she was out there. Yet, she humbly persevered and was the first woman to do so. It’s one thing to conquer an FKT when the conditions are in your favor, it’s a whole other beast when everything is completely stacked against you. Way to go, Alex!!!
Thank you so much for the kind words and for all of your support and encouragement leading up to, during, and after the hike Lacey!
Such an incredible honor to included in this list. Thank you for the fantastic platform that allows for sharing these adventures, learning from one another, and connecting with really inspiring people.
No Mike Foote/Steven Gnam Ptarmigan Traverse on the nomination list? Anybody who beat Leor Pantilat and Uli Steidl was moving mega fast. https://fastestknowntime.com/fkt/mike-foote-steven-gnam-ptarmigan-traverse-wa-2019-07-04
That Woodside/Berry FKT on the West Coast Trail is super impressive. Awesome to see all the technical routes being done too - WURL for both genders, Norman's 13, Wind River, and some little hill called Denali. Big year!
Good call! We probably just missed this one. 661 FKTs were submitted in 2019 for North America alone; voters could not process all that, so we crushed it down to 19 Female and 20 Male - and probably missed a few good ones. Aack - totally on us. Next year we'll put out a "DRAFT" Nominations List further in advance, in order to let people like you comment on it - our goal is for this to be a community process - we're learning how to do that.
Is this only for American Trails? The first time set on the Via Alpina Red Trail was also very impressive (https://fastestknowntime.com/route/alpina-red-trail-slovenia-italy-austria-germany-liechtenstein-switzerland-france-monaco)
Yes, "North American", meaning US and Canada. Last year we did a separate FKTOY-EU award, looks like it might not happen this year, but will bring it back for 2020. Key note: we kept this to NA only because we want the process to be credible; since voters here do not know or understand the routes elsewhere, their votes would be guesses rather than informed choices. Last years FKTOY-EU awards were organized entirely by athletes who live in Europe and really know the scene.
Definitely check out:
FKT Scene in Europe: https://fastestknowntime.com/podcast/23-matt-lefort
FKTOY-EU pt one: https://fastestknowntime.com/podcast/24-fktoy-eu
FKTOY-EU pt two (with Kilian Jornet): https://fastestknowntime.com/podcast/24-fktoy-eu
Thank you everyone for the excellent comments! The 2019 FKTOY process is wrapped, and on Friday another Article will appear announcing the #5, #4 and #3 winners with a very cool podcast to accompany the story. The podcast has one-one conversations with all the winners - hard part was limiting each convo to :10 minutes in order to fit it all in - these are great people talking about great routes, so keeping it to 10 minutes each was hard! Hope you enjoy hearing from these people as much as I did.
Love all the comments here! Love the stoke around this! People are excited to see what routes get chosen!
I know I will be looking for the article and listening to the podcast (and not just because my name is on the list).
Thank you again Buzz and Peter for what you do to bring energy and voice to this community, it makes it feel like we are just a bunch of kids on this playground called Earth waiting to see who does the next cool thing :)
As for the FKT community, I wonder if we will break 1000 submissions in 2020? any guesses?
Jason: 1,000 submissions in 2020 is a reasonable guess - since Peter reviews each one, I just hope it's not too much work for him! 2019 totaled 664 in NA and 175 in Europe for 839 - I could add in everywhere else, but think we're 900+ worldwide.
That is phenomenal! 900+ Worldwide! we need to get Peter some interns. lol!
Congrats to all who made it on the list! This is great inspiration. Makes you want to go to the next level. Can't wait to listen to those future podcasts.
It looks like on the women's side you guys have the badwater to whitney duathlon listed. I thought the consensus was not to include multi-sport efforts. Is this changing?
I am all for including "logical" multi-sport efforts, btw. Just curious on how these are going to be handled by FKT in the future, as I love a good multi-sport link-up!
Erik,
If I am not mistaken there are quite a few multi sport FKTs
longs peak triathlon and duathlon routes
a duathlon ascent on Shasta
and then some big peak linkups by bike in Cali and Colorado
Multisport efforts are allowed within certain parameters, as outlined in our Guidelines.
Oh, I think I remember hearing about this, thanks for resending. I guess maybe I get caught up too much in the semantics of it, but given these rules I imagine Longs Peak Tri comes very close to not being in this classification. I'll send over an effort on Mt. Moran in Jackson my buddy and I did in August of 2019 to see if it qualifies, it is a close one fairly similar to longs peak tri.
I have only just saw this today! I can’t believe I even made this list! So honored to be named among so many amazing accompaniments:)!! Very grateful and humbled for the nomination??