I drove down to Tahawus on Thursday, dropped my car at the Santanoni Trailhead and got shuttled to Corey's Road by Adirondack Foothills Guide Service. Shout out to Sheila for the ride and a lot of interesting historical information along the way! I camped on Corey's road approximately 1km from the trailhead and got to sleep early.
I was sleeping fitfully due to nervous excitement so I ended up getting up around 4:30 am, getting myself ready and then drinking some electrolytes and eating a breakfast of banana bread and a caffeine gel as I walked to the trailhead and signed in.
The trails are very runnable up to the start of the herd path up to Donaldson so I was able to set a good pace and bank some time. I knew what my average pace for the day had to be in order to break the FKT, so I was doing math in my head all day to see how I was doing. When I reached the start of the herd path, I slowed considerably and had some trouble following the trail at times. If I was going to do this over again (ha!), I'd probably aim to get there with some daylight. Either way, I climbed steady and reached the top of the ridge in good time.
It's probably been about 3 years since I did the Sewards or Santanonis and I know they are muddy and rugged, but they were so much worse than I expected. The ridgeline of the Sewards had brush growing over the trail that had me completely soaked in short order. I looked like I had jumped into a pool. I could literally wring water out of my shorts and shirt. The weather was nice and cool so I made good time and started my descent back down to Ward Brook.
Things had been going pretty well up to that point, but Seymour was a different story. I think I was getting behind in my fueling by this point and I struggled mightily on the steep climb up to Seymour. My pace slowed greatly and I began thinking of how much further I had to go and how nice it would be just to cut across the Bradley Pond trail and skip the Santanoni Range altogether. I had done this much vert in a day before but never gone beyond 42km distance. I finally hit the summit in what felt like forever and I tried to get down a couple of gels on the descent. I was really struggling to eat any of my solid food and most of it went untouched the whole day. I stopped to filter at the start of the Seymour herd path and then turned onto the Ward Brook Truck Trail.
This trail was in really great shape with just a few downed trees which could be crossed easily. I got my second wind and started running again, banking more time. I quickly reached the swampy area and ran into a group of backpackers who were halfway across. Probably about 3/4 of the way you can walk on logs but I would estimate I waded through about a foot of water the last 20 feet. The rest of the truck trail up to the junction with the NPT was also very runnable.
I linked up with the Northville Placid Trail and was really surprised by how great the conditions were. This is a pretty remote part of the park and not that many people use that trail but it was not overgrown at all and was very runnable. I reached Duck Hole in short order and crossed the Cold River. That's when I hit the Bradley Pond trail and everything changed. That trail is very overgrown and had a lot of fallen trees that really messed with my rhythm. I ended up just walking as fast as I could for this stretch.
I eventually reached Panther Brook and I felt like the climb went pretty quickly. I was feeling good and got up to Times Square in short order. Panther was a quick out and back and then I started out to Couchsachraga. It was depressing losing so much elevation knowing I'd have to turn around and climb back up it. The whole trail was super muddy but it wasn't too bad crossing the bog. Santanoni was another quick spur and then it was time to start the descent. It was pretty technical at first so my pace wasn't as fast as I'd like but I knew I was ahead of schedule, anyway. There were several spots to filter so I was glad to have worn my waist belt and kept my filter soft flask close at hand. As I got closer to the Santanoni Road, the trail got smoother and I started running again. When I hit the road, I was able to put in a really fast pace for the last few km's. With about 1km left, I tripped and went down pretty hard, hurting some fingers in the process. Dusted myself off and started running again and reached the Santanoni Trailhead in 13:23:44.
This was the hardest thing I've ever done, for sure. I like long days in the mountain but the stress and worry of trying to keep on target pace made things very different from a typical day out for me. I'm really happy to have stuck with it and gotten it in the end. I think a more experienced trail runner who's better on technical terrain than I am can definitely take the time lower so I'm excited to see what can be done in the future. There are some really incredible runners in the Adirondacks putting up times on other routes which are hard to even fathom.