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Route: Three Kings (ID)

Submitted by jacksonlong on Sat, 10/21/2023 - 07:11pm
Location
Idaho, US
Distance
19 mi
Vertical Gain
9,816 ft
Description

The Three Kings Challenge was established long ago and serves as a test piece in the lore of the XC ski racing community in Sun Valley. A simple linkup of 3 prominent peaks seen mightily and visibly from town - Glassford (11,602'), Ryan (11,714'), and Kent (11,664') in the Boulder Mountain range. Don't let the simplicity of this objective fool you though, it is a true challenge, testing mountain athletes' routefinding skills, technical ability over loose and exposed terrain, and of course: fitness. 

With this route comes many route possibilities, but is generally around 19 miles with close to 10,000ft of elevation gain, and mostly off-trail. The original challenge is simply to tag the three summits, any way you see fit, in one day. Probably the most popular route is to summit Glassford first, Then Ryan, then Kent. There are multiple permutations, including navigating the infamous class 4 NW ridge between Kent and Ryan.

The route begins and finishes at the North Fork of the Wood River Trailhead, approximately 5 miles from the Sawtooth National Recreation Area north of Ketchum. Depending on the snowpack and weather conditions, this route can be completed from late June to early October. 

GPS Track
Three_Kings.gpx2.67 MB

FKTs

Comments

troutskiguy
Wed, 02/19/2025 - 09:41am

Hello All,

 

My name is Rick Kapala, former HC of the SVSEF Nordic Ski Team and I created the Three Kings as a summer challenge for our local cross country skiers. I want to clarify a few things about how we define the Three King Challenge for our purposes. Of course, the mountains are free, so people are also free to define their experience as they wish. But since this website is about posting one's time, I feel clarity is important. Again, the standards below are what our SVSEF team employs.

 

1) There is a fixed time of 12 hours alloted for completing the effort...not  "a day". For our team, the clock starts once you step from the parking lot onto the trail and stops once you step back onto the lot upon your return. So, you have 12 hours to do the whole effort...bag all three summits of Glassford, Ryan and Kent and get back to the trailhead. The start and finish is at the trailhead at the northern terminus of the USFS North Fork Road. There have been a number of efforts where kids did not make it back under 12 hours. Heroic to be sure !! This is an important component because we use this as a fittness challenge. The use of 'a day" ignores that a day can mean sun-up to sun-down or 24 hours. Hence for us it is 12 hours and for most people,  that is a pretty high bar

 

2) The next key point is that for our purposes, the clock never stops. I am aware that in this world on FKT.. some folks post "moving time" as a record. That is fine..do what you want. But for our purposes, again the clock starts when you step onto the trail and stops when you step back onto the parking lot. The reasons for this are twofold. First, there are no "time-outs" in a cross country ski race...we are building physical and psychological endurance. Secondly, to stop to sus out the route is of course part of the process but this time spent determining route also counts. This is a big effort over lots of off trail terrain and thinking while moving is part of the test. If you stop your watch to then look at maps or GPS devices...well that sort of softens the challenge.  I have no idea if times posted on this site are moving time or not...do what you want and keep getting out there. But to be clear...there is a significant difference between moving time and total time. One allows for occasional resting and route finding and the other does not.

 

So, within our team, according to these standards the FKT for the Three Kings is by Dave Bingham at 8:05 done before the advent of route tracing tech. Notably Dave and partner Rob Landis also had the FKT for the 9 × 12,000 Idaho Summits until broken a fww years back. Dave and Rob did that effort as 50+ year olds. Dave also won several iterations of the groundbreaking adventure race called Survival of the Fittest created by Kevin Swigert and featured on ABC sports back in the early 80's.  Dave also at one time had one of the fastest up down times on Pikes Peak. The guy is legit...he is also a legend at the City of Rocks, ID

The people who have broken 12 hours on the Three Kings that we are aware of are

Adult Coaches:Dave, Rob and Emily Williams and Chris Grover ; College age xc skiers Pat Casey, Sam Young and Mike Lloyd and High Schoolers Sophia Mazzoni, Anja Grover, Sebi Radl Jones, John Hagenbuch, Galen Grohusky, Gavin Galyardt and Holden Archie.   This is not a long list, for sure. 

Our goal is to get kids out in the mountains and to push themselves to keep moving through challenge. You can lay down for awhile if you need to, but the clock keeps ticking. 

Have fun out there. 

R

 

 

 

 

 

 

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