North

by Scott Jurek

  At Crawford Notch, Castle Black was practically in a ditch—it had been the only open parking space—but it didn’t matter. When I got there, all I wanted to do was lie down and get some solid sleep. Looking back, I realize I should have spent the night at Crawford Notch or, even better, at Franconia Notch and ditched the Galehead goal. I probably should have killed the rest of day thirty-eight, called it good once I’d gotten fourteen miles from Galehead. I needed sleep. But JLu and I could hear Horty saying, “Stay on schedule!” I wasn’t thinking for myself. I was in hurry-up offense mode. I didn’t have time to recoup. So I passed out for just a few hours.

  Timmy quickly joined a group of young yet seasoned thru-hikers and their parking-lot party and sparked a fun Q&A on the ways of the trail. After a handful of beers and a sleepless thirty-six hours, he was buzzing like a drunken gnat. But he quickly sobered when it was go time, and he went from being jester to king’s soldier and started rounding up the troops. Special Forces helped too; he enlisted another stout local runner, Tristan, to hike into the night with us. Tristan was new to me, but I could tell he was wicked strong, and I was more than satisfied with the way our team was shaping up. That was the one positive I pocketed as we made our way out of Crawford Notch at dusk and set out for the next goal: the Lake of the Clouds Hut, the only hut in the White Mountains above tree line and one of the most stunning spots on the whole trail.

  Around midnight, we had to make an unscheduled stop at another hut because it was dangerous to keep moving on granite slabs and rock piles when it was dark and I was so sleep-deprived. There was a scary moment when we were told there was simply no more room for us at the hut, but Tristan came through for us; he’d worked out here and was able to call in a favor. A small favor. We crashed on the kitchen floor.

  It was quiet and warm in the kitchen, and just watching Special Forces inflate a sleeping pad made me groggy. I fell asleep instantly and got four or five solid hours, which felt like an illicit luxury. I did some math while I drifted to sleep, and the reality of how many miles I’d covered in the Whites sank in—and it wasn’t good. I’d moved so slowly. I realized I had lost an entire day on the record in a matter of thirty-six hours. My one-day cushion was gone. There was no room for anything but perfection now.

  The next morning was glorious, with blue skies and a fiery sun blazing behind the white tip of Mount Washington. It towered over us, rising 6,288 feet, making it the highest peak in the Whites and one of the highest on the trail. We started before sunrise and climbed a ridge as the sky behind the summit brightened to yellow. The sun’s rays were invigorating, and the alpine terrain loosened my muscles and lightened my mood. We steadily climbed a couple of thousand feet in the next four miles and then the trail plateaued into a nice rolling stretch, finally giving me an opportunity to open up and run after days of fighting boulders, slabs, and roots. For the first time prior to the pits of Vermud, I felt a bit of ease.

  Still, we couldn’t count on the warm, clear weather lasting. Mount Washington is absolutely infamous for its unpredictable, overwhelming outbreaks of horrific weather, including blinding whiteouts that can occur at almost any time of year. The average wind on Mount Washington is thirty-five miles per hour, and there’s a sign at the weather station on top that says THE HIGHEST WIND EVER OBSERVED BY MAN WAS RECORDED HERE—231 MILES PER HOUR. It can snow any month of the year, averaging forty-two feet annually, and there have been 137 fatalities on the mountain, mostly due to the constant collisions of powerful weather patterns. The mountain is widely known as the most dangerous small mountain in the world.

  In 2006, a twenty-three-year-old hiker walked to the summit on a warm day. Suddenly, he was hit by a storm so severe that by the time he was rescued, he’d suffered massive brain damage. In 2013, an experienced hiker on the trail became so disoriented by the weather that she wandered in the cold and eventually died a short distance from the Lake of the Clouds Hut. It wasn’t the hut’s first tragedy. There was a solemn air to the place, reminding you that Mother Nature was a humbling force. A pair of boots hung from a nail in the hut. Legend had it that they had to be stopped from walking by themselves after the hiker wearing them died. There were so many ghosts in this immediate area that they weren’t even named individually; they were known collectively as the Presence.

  JLu met me at the summit of Mount Washington, and together we took it all in. We were on the roof of the long tunnel. It was a profound, peaceful reminder that we were out there together, and we’d come so far.

  It was the Fourth of July, and with Jenny in our group, we rock-hopped and jostled along the boulders on the tops of Mounts Washington, Jefferson, and Madison to the bottom of Pinkham Notch, following the infamous Presidential Traverse. Even in my beaten-down state, I was able to enjoy this alpine path with JLu and our new friends. We hadn’t been above the tree line together the entire trip, and this was welcome variety, more familiar to us than running in the low and woody peaks eighteen hundred miles south.

  We finally ran out of the Whites, and we paused for a moment before plunging into the next range, the Wildcats. I had a fresh team of über-runners; I had JLu; I had Timmy. I also had my body, although I didn’t know how much of it still functioned.

  I think I had hope.

  And I had a firm belief that I needed a lot more than hope.

  On day thirty-nine, we pushed until 2:00 in the morning to stay on our razor-thin timeline. I was stumbling in the dark but there was no place flat enough to lie down even if my team would allow me to. In all directions, I saw rocks and boulders and roots carpeting the forest floor. We were out of the Presidential Range, but the lesser-known Wildcats were just as formidable. The night seemed to stretch into eternity but we finally made it to the only suitable place to sleep, the appropriately named Imp Shelter, as it seemed that a mischievous sprite (or two) was playing an exhausting, drawn-out, and disagreeable prank on me. Nocturnal rodents gnawed at our hanging packs and scurried over my nylon sleeping bag. I was frequently jolted awake by micro-bursts of nightmarish anxiety as I fretted about falling behind, falling down, and failing myself and JLu. I’d just as quickly cross back into the Land of Nod, and the visions of running late. I kept thinking Special Forces was trying to get me up, and then I’d realize that it was mice, or rats, or worse. I got three hours of sleep if you added all the pieces together.

  I kept trying to convince myself it was all a bad dream.

  * * *

  When Jurker emerged from the woods near Gorham, New Hampshire, in the dawn of day forty, I realized I hadn’t seen him any of the last three nights. They had taken their toll. He was unrecognizable.

  His face had aged twenty years and he had a horrible patchy beard. His limbs looked extra-long and sinewy, and his fingernails were black with dirt. He didn’t even smell like himself—he smelled like our compost bin back home. Timmy pointed out that he wasn’t becoming one with the trail, he was becoming the trail. He speculated that if we sprinkled some seeds on Jurker, they would sprout.

  It wasn’t just physical. He had been drifting further and further away from the person I knew. He had a lifeless blank stare, like his mind wasn’t all there. He reminded me of a soldier who’d gone off to war and came back the same, but different. His fine-motor skills were shot, and the tremors in both his hands had become almost constant. He’d also picked up an odd tic I’d never seen before, letting his lips flap as he exhaled, like a tired horse. He tripped on everything, the tiniest roots and rocks; I could swear he was even tripping on pine needles. Every misstep would pinch his sciatic nerve, and he would jolt upright and grab his lower back. Finally, one pesky blister on the top of his toe was infected, making him wince every time he stubbed it.

  He asked me to grab his big shoes, the size 12 pair, that would accommodate the blister. I dug around in the shoe bin in Castle Black but couldn’t find them. I asked Jurker if he knew where they went. He scrunched up his face and let out a long exhale. “Damn, I gave those to No Poles back in Tenness
ee when I thought I was done. Oh, well, such is trail magic.” He looked too tired to care, too empty for regrets.

  Before Jurker could sit down, Timmy whisked him away and walked him down the road to a nearby hiker hostel. The owner was kind, and she let Scott take a hot shower while she made him a smoothie and toast with peanut butter.

  The hospitality was verifiably magical because, after three sleep-deprived nights, that morning of July 5, Jurker emerged from the hostel with new energy.

  He was clean, fed, and ready to go.

  It was also a moment of major changeover for our whole team. Special Forces and Gabe had to head home, so we assembled replacement runners, some old faces and some new, to help Scott get into the Mahoosuc Range, the last part of the White Mountains and one that pushed all the way into Maine.

  One of the stray runners who joined our caravan was a personal favorite. He had actually crossed our paths earlier, on day thirty-six, when he had left a vegan chocolate cake on the summit of Mount Cube for Scott. He reappeared in New Hampshire on day thirty-seven and got into the habit of placing organic cherries all around Castle Black, like blessings. He also wore very, very, very short shorts. We called him the Cherry Shaman. When he joined us outside the hostel on day forty, he told us he was supposed to run a race that morning but had felt called to be here instead. That was his word—called. He said he was a part of the team now, and then he handed us a lengthy typed poem with strict instructions. “This must be read to Scott in iambic pentameter, at a heart rate of forty-four to forty-eight beats per second, on every other footfall.”

  The last stanza read:

  Perfectly normal, perfectly balanced, and perfectly equalized will be the condition when the being leaves the van each day. Namaste.

  Nama-go running.

  When Jurker left the van that morning, I don’t know if he was balanced and equalized (and he certainly wasn’t normal), but I think the Cherry Shaman’s mantra did enlighten him, because he seemed to have regained a steady running pace.

  Maine

  282 Miles

  All of us have had the experience of a sudden joy that came when nothing in the world had forewarned us of its coming—a joy so thrilling that if it was born of misery we remembered even the misery with tenderness.

  —Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand and Stars

  Chapter 14

  Dancing with the Genie

  Day Forty

  The morning’s descent into Gorham mirrored the overall decline in my bandwidth, as both were gradual, rocky, and absolute. And by the time we had reached JLu and Castle Black, my mental capacity was fried and I was no longer transmitting any signal. It was as if I had placed my brain on airplane mode.

  We can all relate to those annoying conversations caused by a wavering cell signal where you catch only every other word. Like those frustrating phone calls, I was unable to make myself understood, as if I were actually speaking and listening in fragments. It felt like my mind was coming in and out of reception.

  When I had zero bars I would become withdrawn and incommunicado, equal parts off the grid and off my rocker. But then I’d round a turn, get to the top of a rise, and suddenly I’d be full bars. It was during these times, when I joyously crested the surface, that I’d reach out to connect, as I typically love to converse and prompt discussions. And just like when your multiple in-boxes noisily ping with each new notice, I would chime in to the conversations, catching the punch lines, sometimes even finishing them, signaling to my trail mates that I was back in service.

  My new running partners were two of the greatest runners you’ve never heard of, Ryan and Kristina Welts, locals who knew Horty. It was a joy to watch them navigate the trail. They were like kids on a jungle gym, skating down slabs, hopping over gaps, swinging off branches and roots that they dubbed “cedar handrails.”

  Ryan held the FKT for the section of AT called the Mahoosuc Traverse, so this part of the state was his training ground. They were more than just happy; they were also well prepared. Along with their buddy Nate, they carried large backpacks full of lightweight camping gear and wonderfully nonessential comforts such as a giant Rice Krispies Treat the size of a pillow. They were into gutting it out—and laughing while they did it. They were a welcome change of pace from the heaviness and grandeur of the Whites and from all my depressingly slow miles there. I let myself forget about the miles and time altogether, and the feeling that the record had almost certainly slipped away from me.

  I was fully present; I was moving. Moving well. But I didn’t think too much about it. It was way too soon to start feeling confident again.

  As we approached the Maine border—my final crossing—the excitement among the members of our group started to build. Timmy and JLu hiked in to meet us right before the border; there was no way she was going to miss crossing that line together. They brought sleeping bags so they could stay at the shelter with us. Right where the trail crossed the border, we saw a sign that read SPRINGER MOUNTAIN—1899.8 MILES. KATAHDIN—281.4 MILES. It was monumental. The fourteenth and final state. It had never grown old and tired; it hit me deep to my core. A Creamsicle sunset made the moment especially magical and ranked with the most memorable of times I’d cultivated on the trail since signing my name in the guest book and starting off into the Georgian darkness.

  If I don’t make it, or if I don’t make the record, this will still be worth it. I kept that thought to myself, but those few hours made that clear to me. To be out here with JLu and Timmy doing what we all loved was enough.

  The trail across the higher Mahoosuc ridgeline wove through the trees, and it was beautiful. When the trail wasn’t rocky, we were walking on wooden planks to cross over bogs of mud and silt, moose territory. The views over the big north country were full of an untamed splendor. Pretty soon the terrain got so steep, we had to hold on to metal handrails drilled into the granite, what Timmy called “stone staples.” Before it got totally dark, we’d made it to Full Goose Shelter and we were exuberant, just coursing with adrenaline. Thirty minutes later, we fell asleep like logs to the chainsaw snores of tired souls who were already tucked into the shelter.

  We set off in the predawn darkness, with Timmy and JLu taking a side trail to peel off the AT while I dove deeper into Mahoosucs’ bowels, a deep gully that looked like a glacier had dumped all its contents into a jumbled mess at the bottom. Massive boulders, crushed rock beds, and downed trees with gigantic root balls were littered everywhere. AT thru-hikers know it as the “hardest mile” and can take over two hours to pass through the mangled mess. I squeezed my body through fissures in miniature slot canyons formed by stacks of angular blocks. On all fours, I scrambled over the top of moss-covered rocks, grabbing onto roots and branches of hemlocks and balsam firs.

  The genie that had escaped the bottle near Galehead Hut was back and I couldn’t stuff him back in, so I had to wrestle with him under, over, and through this mile for an hour and twenty minutes before I danced through the Mahoosuc Notch with two left feet.

  Seven miles later I hit Grafton Notch as the midday sun was baking the pavement parking lot. While reloading my pack at Castle Black, I heard a fellow NoBo thru-hiker shout out, “Hey, Scott, you’re catching up to the badasses. It’s time to start acting like one!” Even though I was starting to approach the strongest hikers of the AT Class of 2015, I sure didn’t feel like I was much of a badass.

  We looked at the numbers. On day thirty-nine, I’d done only thirty-two miles. Day forty had been worse: twenty-nine miles. Day forty-one was only thirty. I became painfully aware of the meager progress I’d been making. I’d been pushing myself to the limit, but the mileage wasn’t reflecting that.

  That thru-hiker made me reflect back to 2006 when Caballo Blanco tried getting under my skin in hopes of motivating me to venture down to race the Tarahumaran. In an e-mail he asked, “How chingon are you?” And for this venture, if I wanted the record I would need to be a lot more badass.

  Day forty-two did not s
tart auspiciously. I’d ended day forty-one by sleeping more hours than I should have, so JLu was already upset at me when dawn arrived, and I woke up dragging my feet, knowing I’d have to cover extra miles. Actually, I woke up to the sound of moose hooves galloping across pavement. Everyone else woke up too and scrambled to avoid getting trampled by the fatally powerful legs of the massive beast. As I dawdled in the van, doing my best to delay the start of another grueling day, Timmy joked to JLu that I left two tracks of ruts in the trail from my dragging feet.

  Back in Boulder, I’d figured I’d be done with the whole trail by now. Instead, I felt like I was in a hamster wheel. I was running but my progress was a myth. Maine miles just seemed to keep going nowhere. Especially disheartening was how meandering the trail got up here, meaning that I’d sometimes be running due south in order to go north.

  Eight miles into the day, I slipped on a slab of rock and landed on my hip. In the process, I snapped my hiking pole in half. The two parts were just barely connected by some carbon fibers. It was useless. I was so angry at the rock, I thrashed the remains of the pole against it over and over until it finally shattered completely. Luis had returned for one more AT tour of duty, and he stepped back. His face said everything. I was unrecognizable. Maybe I’d finally snapped altogether.

  Still, everyone on the team and everyone who came out to see me kept saying encouraging things like “You’re almost there!” and “Only four more days left!” Like it was the surest thing in the world. Perversely, their excitement for me made me feel worse. I was bending in half, hanging on by only a few threads, like my hiking pole.

  It was on day forty-two that I morosely asked the local runners to run on ahead. They did, no questions asked. I needed space alone to face the numbers. There was an overwhelming sadness that I needed to process all by myself. I had to remind myself that the whole trip wasn’t a waste, that the experience was greater than the record. I wanted to feel the emotions that came with accepting it was over. It would have been easier to bottle them up, but they were too heavy. This was what I came for, but it was still hard to stomach. I was dead in the water, floating facedown—FKT’d.