Talked my friend Dane into joining me for a strong effort on the Wallowa Lake Tour Loop. I had run it previously in 2019 in the CW direction without any time pressure and enjoyed the trails and view immensely. Had been eyeing Ben's FKT for a while as it seemed in the realm of what I could achieve (assuming no snow to posthole through).
For this go at it, we decided on CCW with the idea that the technicality of Glacier pass and the innumerable switchbacks of Polaris would be less of a time cost while ascending. Also I just wanted to mix up the experience from before.
Our goal was Sub 7hr and as it appeared that a certain Wallowa local Kody Shriver had completed the loop in 7:03, meaning we no longer had the 30 min buffer to Ben's time we had thought.
We planned to start at 7, but TH bathrooms were closed for the season, so we had to make a trip back to the campground prior to our start at 7:23 AM
The trail up West fork was smooth and mostly runnable for us and a great way to ease into the day. We did have a 2 min delay when we missed the Lake Basin Trail at 6 mile meadow and had to backtrack a touch. We were a few minutes up on expected pace at the meadow, then again at Horseshoe lake, Moccasin lake, and by the top of Glacier pass we were about 10 mins ahead of plan. The descent from the pass to the crossing with the West fork of the Wallowa went smoothly but a bit slower than planned as we decided to keep it cruisy vs borrow from the legs we would need for Polaris. We filled up with water--my less streamlined setup cost us a few extra minutes--and made it to the intersection with Polaris a couple minutes ahead of plan, but with time lost over the last section. Dane steadily got a lead on me through the first half of the climb (low point for me) but a caffeinated gel and some stoked yelling brought the mood back up and I managed to not let him get further away. Dane was at the top finishing up a blister bandaid application to his heal when I arrived and--a few minutes behind schedule now--we took off toward tenderfoot. By the time we hit tenderfoot I didn’t have much uphill power left and that 300ft took a lot longer than it should. Once we were headed down to Aneroid, the time left wasn't looking good for sub 7, and are legs weren't feeling spunky either. Decided to cruise into Aneroid and then see what we could lay down from there. After a quick refill at a creek, Dane took off and we gave about all we had into the next 6 miles. The last four are decently rocky and it was full focus and full tilt until the last switchback and we truly sprinted (ok, no 100m records were set, but it FELT fast) to the TH sign accidently surprising a few backpackers just finishing their weekend.
While we were 55 seconds over our goal, it was a great way to finish a solid effort that overall went quite smoothly.
A truly incredible loop, couldn't really ask for more in a good mountain run.
NOTE: My watch GPX reads 8 seconds shorter than Dane's as I accidentally paused it instead of taking a lap while we were stopped at the west fork of the Wallowa.