We three ladies from Austin, Texas started the route at 6:30am on Friday 20 August from the South Athens Bigfork trail head (southwest corner of the loop), to knock out the big climbs as early as possible. This added two extra miles and two big climbs (out n back) to our overall stats. I had to no idea we'd have to basically 4-wheel drive across sketchy fields and ruts to reach the trailhead! Our total time was 14 hours 4 minutes 29 seconds. Our first and last miles were on the connecting trail, taking 1 hour 1 min 19 seconds. If I subtract this from our total time, our actual Eagle Rock Loop time is 13 hours 3 minutes 10 seconds.
The climbs were tough, but not so horrible, especially with trekking poles. We had so many river crossings I lost count. We brought our food/snacks in our packs and refilled water with our BeFree filters from the many river crossings. The tree cover made the morning rain perfect and the afternoon was sunny and hot. Happily, we are used to Austin heat and the biggest battles were vs. expansive cobwebs and evil, nasty horse flies. The trails were gnarly and interesting, with a ton of rocks.
I highly recommend this loop for Trail Running Adventurers. We never got lost, but had to keep our eyes open, to stay on the route, especially during river crossings.