Route: Mountains-to-Sea Trail: Segment 1 (NC)

July 23rd had my wife drop me at clingmans dome with plan to meet me at water rock at 9pm. I just bought a SPOT GEN4 and was tracking with this and my Garmin watch. Unfortunately the SPOT performed poorly and only gave me 2 locations the whole 13.5 hours. My garmin worked great but I failed to bring the chord and to my surprise it hit low battery at 9 hours and shortly cut off. I will put a link to the Garmin page below. I dont have the complete the tracking all the way to water rock so cannot submit an official FKT. I started at 9:05 and finished 10:24PM. I think 12 hours should be attainable for the course. I struggled a great deal with the elevation and finished with a sick stomach. I threw up shortly after finishing. It was a good day weather was great. I think my nutrition was off. I only packed a couple gells, a cliff block, 3 stinger waffles and 3 bobo bars. I think more nutrition and some protein will need to be in my pack on the next segment. I am planning to take the whole MTS trail in segments. I wore my solomon vest with 2 chest bottles and 2 handheld filtered katadyn bottles. I filled up first at deep Creek and then next at ocunaluftee visitor center. After the visitor center was when thinks got bad. I hit a low spot and was struggled just to hike. I made it past the mile high camprground (note this looks like a great campground to come back to glad that i discovered it) After mile high I drew again from a stream and then finally one more time a couple miles from the finish. You definitely need to plan on filtered water there is nothing after ocunaluftee. I probably will not go do it again even though I would love to get the official FKT. I am moving on the MTS segement 2 and will plan to submit segment 2 as a new route when I complete it. 

https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/9288156282

Tim Sill

I am planning a supported attempt at this trail segment and thus the FKT on Thursday, May 25.

May 25, 2023: I was unable to complete the entire segment and stopped at 50k. The first 26 mile segment from Kuwohi to Mingus Mill was much more difficult and technical than I had planned. I was not well prepared. I suggest a scouting trip on the first half of this route before attempting it.

I just completed this (supported) on June 19, 2023 with about 5 hours of it in the rain :) in just over 18 hours. I was not planning to nor did I run this, minus about 1 mile. On a decent weather day, a true trail runner should be able to complete this in 12-13 hours by my best guess. The upper portion of the beginning that is shared with the AT is somewhat technical in spots but not too awful. The descent down Mingus Creek Trail is trail cruisin' until the bottom. The climb up the parkway and then on to Mile High Campground was the worst part to me as this is just a grind of a climb without much relief. Then it is trail cruisin' again for a while. I anticipated the climb up from Soco Gap to be more difficult than it was, but the trail here is VERY nicely graded until the last 1.5 miles. At this point it gets quite technical, more so than any other part of this segment, which will slow anyone waaay down. When I reached this point it was dark and foggy so I couldn't really see that well so that was a contributor. I started on the top of Kuwahi, but not the tower and ended at the marker on Waterrock Knob. The half mile hike up to the summit of Kuwahi and the half mile descent down from Waterrock Knob are not tracked so the parts are in addition to the 47 miles for the segment. Also, the .3 miles to the summit of Waterrock Knob is not part of the MST but is required for the challenge. 

Hiking segment 1 in less than 24 hours is known in some circles as the Peak to Peak Challenge.

I also hiked this as part of Hike for Healing 2023 to help promote ongoing conversation toward healing of racial and cultural divisions.