After Remi Boille's savage onslaught on this trail this past hot and humid Sunday, Marianne and I thought we'd step up to the plate and try to lower Sean's time. We had his splits at the King Mountain trail cutoff (29:30), Diamond Mill Bridge crossing (1:18), Tillamook Forestry Center (1:38), and Cedar Creek road crossing (2:12) before the final climb. We took off pretty hot and toasted ourselves early, but were still within 30 seconds of the first three checkpoints. We'd slipped to 1 minute behind by the bottom of the final climb. We both fueled well (R: 2 Spring Energy canaberries and a Koffee, M: Spring Energy Koffee, Hill Aid and a Gu) and felt like we were moving really well! On the final switchbacks we heard the road getting louder and louder and thought we might have a chance, but it was a bit longer than we'd thought! Marianne took the most elegant spill in a wet tuft of grass, but didn't miss a beat and kept hammering all the way back to Mr. B! We parked the car in the lower parking lot at Keenig Creek, so were a bit confused when we popped out up top by the outhouse (which is where the segment officially ends), we ran back on the trail to the cutoff to get back to the car, and I cropped that additional run back to the car off the Strava.
We got off trail about 3 miles after the Forestry Center, but the trail petered out in a field of Scotch broom pretty quickly, I estimate we lost about 30-45 seconds there so didn't make a huge difference. Trail was in excellent condition and we only saw 3 people the whole time!