Time: 0:00:00 Distance: 0.0 "Trailhead" I started carrying 5.5L of electrolyte mix and three gels. I wore some long gaiters and thought my running poles would come in handy.
1:27/4.08 "Guadalupe Peak" The trail up Guadalupe was straight forward, quite a bit of elevation gain but nothing confusing. Whoever set the Strava segment at 40 minutes, WOW!
3:00/6.35 "Shumard Peak" I took a good look at the downclimb off the NW side of Guadalupe Peak. It looked more dangerous than I was willing to take on, so I took the more NE ridgeline to the creek bottom. I don't know that it was any safer with some of the terrain I had to cross closer to the bottom and the alternate route added distance and elevation. I climbed out via the SE ridgeline of Shumard Peak.
4:09/7.86 "Bartlett Peak" Coming off the north side of Shumard, there are a lot trees and deer paths but its all very steep. The trees thinned out on Bartlett and the sun really started to warm up. The route finding became a bit difficult and the I started to accumulate some scratches on my knees since I wore running shorts and gaiters. I took a more circular route up the south of side of Bartlett to reach it's SE ridgeline and cruised on up to the top.
4:57/9.01 "Bush Mountain" The descent off Bartlett isn't bad, just lots of winding back and forth through the shrub oak and cactus. There's a well beaten deer path on the climb to Bush Mountain Trail that really started to ease my mind back into faster movement. I realized I was becoming pretty dehydrated at this point and needed to drink more. The off trail section was MUCH tougher and slower than I had a imagined. I couldn't find a brass marker or ammo can/log book for Bush, but I reached the highest point around. Took off my gaiters since the remaining route is all on trail. My knees and quads were pretty cut up.
6:27/12.94 "Hunter Peak" The trail from Bush to Hunter was easy going, rolling hills. A little brushy here and there and enough rocks to make it difficult to run, so mostly power hiking. It's all downhill from here. Time to put on some music and cruise it out.
7:00 I ran out of fluids, so I'm going dry from here to the finish. I had about 3.5 miles to go, all downhill, but its the high desert and its already been a long day.
7:58:59/17.86 "Trailhead" That was tough. I was really dragging towards the end. Long descent from Pine Top. The trail opens up in the last two miles and is pretty runnable, but I didn't have enough left to run it, so more power hiking for me. Tough day.
I didn't have anybody run with me. I had some friends arriving the next day to go for a four day hiking trip in the backcountry. No resupply, although a water drop would really come in handy around the time I regained the trail on Bush Mountain.