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.

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