On Friday May 30th, I drove out from Portland, ME to the Carter-Moriah Trailhead in Gorham, NH to attempt an out-and-back ('yo-yo') of the Moriah-Carter-Wildcat Traverse. This was a completely unsupported effort, with only water taken from the spigot at Carter Notch Hut as has been confirmed as acceptable by FKT for these WMNF unsupported attempts as the huts are a White Mountain tradition. I carried all of my gear, food and water myself with no pacing support or assistance from anyone else. At 6:02am, I started my watch as I walked up to the trailhead.
Having driven through a bit of rain on the way out to Gorham, I was weary of the weather forecast turning for the worse later in the day. Ideally, I would've left an hour earlier to avoid coming down Moriah later in the dark; however, I was extremely thankful to get one of the nicest weather days we've had in May this year. It stayed relatively cool and cloudy throughout the day, with peeks of sun shining through and wind on the open portions of the traverse.
Having worked on clearing some of the blowdowns and tree shrapnel between Middle Carter and Carter Notch Hut a few weeks ago, I was prepared to still run into numerous obstacles that may slow the speed of travel down significantly. Heading up Moriah, it was quickly clear how much still needs to be cleared, though it was arguably much worse on the section between Moriah's southern shoulder and Middle Carter. Along the ascent over Surprise and up to Carter there was significant mud to navigate and blowdowns that pushed the navigable path off trail. I also crossed a very large bear print freshly pressed into the mud in the middle of the trail and decided that I wanted to spend as little time as possible in the woods after dark later that night so I'd need to stick with the planned pace for the day.
Moriah's summit (7:40am) was mostly socked in but the cover was moving quickly on account of the strong winds blowing across from the Presidentials. I snapped a photo and threw my shell on for the first time in the day to block the wind and avoid getting too cold as I settled back into a less strenuous section. The open ledges heading toward North Carter were a little bit slippy, but didn't slow things down much. I passed by the first hiker of the day, who was heading North carrying a sizable pack and looked like he may be through-hiking the AT (would be a little early in the year to see a through-hiker, no?), around the halfway point from Moriah to North Carter. I didn't run into anyone else until I hit the shoulder of Middle Carter. The route from Moriah to the Carters was littered with blowdowns that made for stop-start travel and limited the amount of consistent running that I could get in. Passing over North Carter (9:16am), I arrived at Middle Carter (9:33am) and was back into more familiar trail-itory having visited the Carters and Wildcats multiple times over the past couple of months and knowing that some work had been done to clear the path or at least create some openings in the mess to poke through. Taking the South Carter summit (9:54am) I headed down towards the trail junction with Carter Dome Trail, continuing on to Mt Hight (10:34am) and over to Carter Dome (10:49am) before dropping down to the Carter Notch Hut and refilling water there.
The 'out' across the Wildcats (A - 11:59am; D - 12:38pm) and down Wildcat Ridge Trail to cross over the Ellis River (1:25pm) was relatively uneventful. There were more people on this section from Carter Notch across to Wildcat D than I saw the entire rest of the trail. The return leg up the Wildcat Ridge Trail was slightly more tenuous, as I had dropped my bag between Carter Notch Hut and Wildcat A to ensure that I didn't play any negative mind games with myself around quitting at the Ellis River. Unfortunately, as I had been loading up my jacket with my hat / gloves / snacks / soft flask, I mixed my two soft flasks up... and took the one without the filter. Rationing water for the route down from Wildcat D to Ellis River and then back up and across the Wildcats was a mentally taxing exercise and I couldn't refrain from some negative self-talk about how stupid I was to not just take both soft flasks. Lesson learned for next time: ensure I take the filter, at the very least. On the positive side, I did pick up the pace and run a bit of the D-to-A traverse (summiting at 2:38pm and 3:18am, respectively), which helped to move things along a little quicker.
After a quick descent down Wildcat A, I grabbed my backpack, continued to Carter Notch Hut for a second time to refill water and take down as much fluid as I could to try to rehydrate back from my state of desiccation. Knowing that the ascent to Carter Dome was a possible breaking point from a climbing legs perspective, I took this part relatively slowly and passed the summit at 4:47pm without stopping, transitioning to a jog across to Mt Hight (5:02pm) and down to the Carter Dome Trail junction once again by 5:16pm. The Carters were a little bit of a blur as my mind began to wander to thoughts of whether I could make it down before sunset (no), but the internal insistence that this was possible kept my legs from slowing down across each of these summits (South: 5:34pm, Middle: 6:02pm; North: 6:16pm). Coming off of the descent from North Carter I found myself back in the thickest section of blowdowns, this time with well-worn legs but the inspiration that I'd finally started to regain some level of 'speed' (if you can even call it that) over the past couple of miles. I channeled my inner Catherine Zeta-Jones and maneuvered between the branches of the fallen trees as she had dipped beneath the lasers in the film Entrapment (minus one skimpy black bodysuit on my part) and continued on up the shoulder ledges heading towards Moriah once more for the final summit (7:52pm) while speaking to myself in her co-star Sean Connery's accent. Yeah, it was a weird section of trail.
From Moriah, the sun was nearly tucked in between the low clouds for the night and it was time to get off this mountain. Hustling down through the woods and across the heavy camber of the ledges was surprisingly comfortable for this point in the effort; I was now coaching myself verbally to push forward while also playing music in the hopes of alerting any larger animals that might be using the trail that I was coming. Out of nowhere, as I was just crossing over Mt Surprise, I heard my watch buzz and give a final death beep (read: whimper); legend says that's how this spot got the name Mt Surprise... kidding, of course, but I was surprised and quite upset about the incident as I had full battery to start the day and it had noted 23 hours of activity tracking time at 6am. In an absolute panic, I plugged my watch into the battery pack, started to record a new trail run on the Strava app on my phone and then immediately took off as fast as I could down the remaining 1.8 miles back to the trailhead. I ended the "Part II" Strava tracking at the trailhead at 9:03pm and kept moving back to my car. Still nervous that my effort wouldn't have saved the day's tracking, I took a video documenting my return to the car, my frustration regarding the watch dying and began googling whether my watch data would be recoverable or if I would be back to run this route another day. Thankfully, after spending most of the following day gaining access to the .fit file that didn't want to show up when initially plugging into the computer, I was finally able to find it and manually upload it to Strava for this verification. Hopefully the combination of the two separate Strava tracks will verify the effort and timing for the FKT reviewer(s).
Total Elapsed Time: 15 hour, 1 minute, 34 seconds