Fastest Known Times
Many from our group took part in the Shawnagunk Ridge Trail races, as well as the Pisgah Trail Race, the Free to Run 50, the Rocky Point 50 MTB race and an epic FKT in NH! Check it out!
Ben is I’m always interested in challenging new routes, and has been especially interested in new FKT routes in CT & MA that are accessible for months longer than trails up north so he found himself the South Taconic Trail along with the AT that gave him a challenging route of 27 miles with about 8,000 feet of gain and some amazing views!
Plan C was to head north to ride the Camel’s Hump by the Bamforth Ridge, where the trailhead was about 2k feet lower. It was raining hard as I drove north, and I was starting to accept that I might be out for a 7 hour ride with no run.
This was plan D, and what a fine plan it turned out to be. The forecast for Sunday did look quite bad, with rain and high winds (50-70mph), and the possibility of thunderstorms...
Karl Meltzer just completed the 2,190 mile Appalachian Trail in record time, 45 days, 22 hours, 38 minutes, beating Scott Jurek's 2015 record by 9 hours 30 minutes!
A few weeks ago, I received an email from Rufus Frost asking me if I was interested in being involved in the filming of a FKT attempt on the 18.4 mile Presidential Traverse. They thought the idea of an FKT attempt would be a good fit for a World of Adventure episode on Outside TV, as well as provide good footage for a Subaru ad.
Date: December 27th, 2015
Location: Bear Mountain & Harriman State Park, NY.
Adventure: Suffern Bear Mountain Trail North to South
Data: 23 miles, 6,000+ feet elevation gain.
Date: November 22nd, 2015
Location: North Eastern Catskills of New York
Adventure: Devil’s Path, 25 miles of Catskill rocks and roots with 10k of climbing
Date: Sunday, September 20th, 2015
Location: New Hampshire's White Mountain National Forest
Adventure: Kinsman Ridge FKT - 15 miles, 6,850 feet of elevation gain.
Date: Sunday, August 30, 2015
Location: New Hampshires White Mountain National Forest & Sandwich Range Wilderness.
Adventure: 13.6 miles, 6,400 feet of elevation gain.
FKT date: August 8th, 2015
Location: Pemigewasset Wilderness, NH
Adventure: Pemi Loop FKT, 31 Miles, 9,500 feet elevation gain
Date: July 12th, 2015
Location: Suffern NY through Harriman State Park to Bear Mountain NY.
Adventure: 23 miles, 5,400 feet elevation gain
Date: June 14th, 2015
Location: Carter Moriah Range in New Hampshire
Adventure: 17.5 Miles, 6 summits over 4k, 8,000 feet elevation gain
Date: May 5th, 2015
Location: Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania
Adventure: 43 miles, 7000 feet elevation gain
On 1/19/15 Ben Nephew set a Fastest Known Time (FKT) on the Pachaug Trail which is a 24 mile U shaped trail through Eastern Connecticut from Green Fall Pond, to route 138 in the town of Griswold, with a short visit to Rhode Island. Like the Nehantic and Narragansett trails, it is mostly rolling single track interspersed with sections of jeep roads and few road crossings.
After several of the locals, mostly Ryan Welts and Adam Wilcox, had suggested that I would really enjoy the Tripyramid loop, I found some time to head up on August 10th...I’m finally getting around to posting some runs from this past summer!
Date: November 2nd, 2014
Location: Breakneck Ridge, Northern Hudson Area of New York
Adventure: 12.5 miles, 5,500 feet elevation gain
In 1958, Chris Goetze broke the 31 year-old record for the Mahoosuc Traverse by over two hours, running the rugged 29 mile route with over 10k of climb in 8:06:30. Late last week, Ryan Welts emailed a few of us to see if anyone was interested in joining him for a hard run over the traverse.
Soon after I finished the North South trail in RI, I started thinking about some of the nearby Blue Blazed trails in CT. I had done an out and back on the Nehantic trail and was impressed by how well it was marked and the quality of the terrain. A few people mentioned that the Narragansett Trail was a much more interesting route,
This one scared me, literally and figuratively. Where do I start? I had hiked many of the trails, which includes several of the hardest trails in the Northeast, and the idea of linking them up into a massive loop seemed like the ultimate White Mountain test piece. It is that and then some.