Bridger Beatdown. This route truly lives up to its name.
- My experience was one of complete and utter unpreparedness that produced sub-par results and a lot of pain. Don't get me wrong, I'm thrilled with my result, but I think that this route can go much, much faster. I ran out of both food and water, and hit darkness, at mile 28, 6:05 into the route. For the remainder of my run I was too hungry/bonked to push any uphills or run any flats, and running downhill produced severe nausea. I also stopped at various snowbanks to eat snow for a total of about 5 minutes. If I could have continued fueling and hydrating, and avoided routefinding errors caused by darkness, I think averaging 12min/mile for the remaining 10 miles would be feasible for an 8:05 finish time. A better runner than me can probably take this into the mid 7s if they're really determined.
- It was a huge bummer to see that after the rains yesterday a few dirt bikers had gone up the trail from Middle Cottonwood to around Jones Creek- they rutted and slashed out the trail horribly and cut a lot of switchbacks, making for ugly-looking trail that was hard to run on. It's just selfish and shortsighted.
-In that same vein, I attempted to follow the trail wherever possible but I accidentally cut a few switchbacks myself where I mistook the dirt bikers' track for the main trail. I also deviated from the trail climbing up lingering snowfields on the ascent of Sacs and in a few spots between Ross and Saddle where I got lost in the dark.
-Aesthetically, running the Foothills out and then Ridge back makes the most sense, but I think this route would go faster in the other direction. You would get the initial 4,000' climb from the M out the way and then have an easy downhill cruise back at the end of the Foothills, instead of trying to run down the ridge trail on trashed legs. I think that the technical trail around Saddle would be a lot more runnable on fresh legs, whereas the runnability of the Foothills trail won't change much on tired legs. Lastly, the South side of Sacs is far more technical than the North side and much more suited for the ascent route than the descent as it currently is.
-My phone died right around the summit of Baldy, so while I have no pace/GPS info for my final 3 miles, taking the ridge trail down is really the only option here. This cost me 3-5 minutes on my time because once I finished the route I had to start my car, charge up the phone by a few %, and then boot it up and end my run on Strava. What can you do.