The short version:
Repeated in the same style as Jason "Ras" Vaughan, I carried what I needed into the around-the-mountain (a-t-m) trail to start and finish from the intersection of the climbing route and the a-t-m trail, only I decided to start on the south side at the intersection with the south climbers route and run a half-circ first.
But either way, the precedent is to not include approach and exit time so that future athletes can still choose which side of the mountain they start on without different approaches adding or taking away mileage, which fits with how most other infinity loops have trailheads that are lined up with their trailheads, and how when running pure circ records you can hike in and start from anywhere on the loop.
After the first half-circ, I climbed the North Cleaver. It was a dry screefest, but oddly enjoyable, even on my exhausted body (as this was my third infinity loop in three weeks). I then descended the south route down to my cached gear/food.
"the gap" in the trail on the East side was the crux as it was last year when I did the Adams Summit + Circumnavigate (reverse lollipop). During the final mile of "The Gap" Ashly Winchester fell in behind me to follow through a particularly heady section due to my having been through before. I fully believe she would have made it through on her own if she hadn't seen me come up. but alas, I do believe she is doing the thing of integrity and changing her otherwise wholly unsupported effort to "supported". I am unsure if this should change the status of my effort from self-supported to supported.
I will leave that up to the admins to decide. If you guide someone during an FKT effort do you forgo unsupported or self-supported style?
After getting back around the mountain, I climbed the North Cleaver again...in the dark, taking mini-shiver-bivys-with-no-bivy at various established camps on the way up.
I had a sunrise summit, a cold-hard-icy descent and stopped my time as I completed the infinity loop back at the trail intersection.
Photos in Strava
Note from Admin:
Jason Hardrath asked to have his effort Flagged after receiving news from an anonymous source that the Tract-D Yakama Nation Land was closed. "I will admit, I failed to do sufficient research on this one, I thought that when you traverse around the mountain at around 8500' as described in Alex King's Circumnavigation Route you avoid this issue. I was wrong and upon further research, I was on closed land. The responsibility falls on me though. When you do so many of these efforts you're going to miss something at some point, but it is still on me." Jason also reached out to the tribes forestry department on behalf of himself to willingly offer to pay a fee or citation for trespassing closed land. "It just seemed like the right thing to do. It's like what I tell my students, when you make a mistake, you own it and learn from it, that is how we become better people." Because of this flag we will accept a time that does not beat Jason Hardrath's time, but will leave it here as a reference for future efforts.