Report on our sea-to-summit-to-sea journey yesterday - we made it! Big climb and descent, wide range of terrain and vegetation (and trail condition), beautiful place. Good weather too, happily.
Here's the summary; I'll follow up with a blog post with photos and screenshots from the GPS tracking and my splits.
My husband John Beard and I climbed separately. We started from the ocean near the Kaupo church, climbing Kaupo Trail and connecting to Sliding Sands to reach the summit of Haleakala. John waited for me at the top and we then descended together. We both felt we climbed well. The return trip was long and of course 10,000 feet down is nothing to sneeze at, so we took our time getting back to the bottom. The trail can be difficult to run in places (loose rocks, overgrown vegetation) so I didn't get down quite as fast as anticipated.
John's ascent time was 5:23:51 (not a FKT) and he reports that getting under 5 hours is possible but would take some strong climbing/uphill running.
My ascent time was 7:17:11, setting the first reported female Sea-to-Summit FKT.
John's roundtrip time was 13:17:08, setting the FKT (as far as we know) for S2S2S from the bottom to the top of Maui and back. This time is certainly soft, as he waited for me almost 2 hours at the top and followed me down at my pace.
My roundtrip time was 13:26:32 (even though we finished together, I started before John after he dropped me off near the church and parked the car, such a gentleman). This is a female FKT for this route.
As far as categories, our roundtrip S2S2S times are supported. We were traveling together and sharing food and water.
John's ascent was unsupported - he carried everything (including all water) from bottom to top.
I propose that my ascent was unsupported, as I carried everything up with me except for a water refill at Kapalaoa Cabin. However, John walked with me up the road for the final 10 minutes to the top. If that's considered too much "pacing" and anyone suggests that the effort is therefore supported, that's fine. It's most important that we completed the journey, whatever category it fits into is not a big deal.
I'll post a link to the blog report when I finish it.
-Marcy Beard
My first FKT report - it's a bit long:
marcy-twss.blogspot.com/2016/04/sea-to-summit-to-sea-on-maui.html