North

by Scott Jurek

  Less than an hour later, as I was coming down a massive hill, the trees began to thin, the grade gradually leveled, and I could finally see the road that the trail crossed. As we got closer, I spotted Castle Black and several cars. More important, I saw the people who would determine my immediate fate.

  JLu was there, with Krissy, a longtime ultrarunner friend of ours. And there was Topher’s wife, Kim, herself an ultrarunner and a crew chief extraordinaire.

  Walter was scheduled to rejoin us tomorrow, as was my Boulder friend Aron Ralston, who would both run the Hundred-Mile Wilderness with me. Ralsty famously amputated his own arm with a cheap multitool to escape death in a Utah slot canyon, so I hoped that his grit and determination would rub off on us all. There would also be a new guy from the Maine Trail Monsters club, Joe Wrobleski; he held the self-supported FKT for the Hundred-Mile Wilderness AT section. Most skilled hikers spend about nine to twelve days traversing the Hundred-Mile Wilderness, but Iron Joe had run it in forty-three hours. I needed to do it in under forty-eight. Anything more and I could kiss the record good-bye.

  In the past, the best moments in my life were when I reached down and found inner strength where I’d thought none existed. But I needed more than my own strength these days. I needed the strength embodied by the people standing by the side of the road, waving and calling out. This time, I really didn’t have any strength left. But my team did. And even if they gave it to me, it still wouldn’t be mine. It would be ours, collectively, just like the FKT would be—if we managed to get it.

  Later, after Katahdin, I would look back and realize this moment was when the long “final day” began. A day that would combine many terrestrial days into one barely differentiated stretch of running and resting, split up only nominally by a few stolen hours of sleep. Night and day no longer meant anything other than whether or not we needed our headlamps.

  I was disoriented, like in the floating state of consciousness during an extended hospital stay. Sleep deprivation makes time peel back at the edges; you can start to lose your bearings very quickly. You wake up at strange hours and never when you mean to. You doze off in the middle of conversations or during meals. Your sleep isn’t quite sleep. Your waking isn’t exactly waking. It starts to feel like you’re living your life in a permanent twilight, where your circadian rhythms have lost their beat and you might collapse at any moment.

  Topher set the pace, which, in typical Topher fashion, was precisely calculated. I was more tired than ever, but I could also feel the strength emanating from Topher and Krissy, two people who shared a very special gift for endurance and meeting almost impossible challenges. There was immense trust among the three of us; we knew we could function effectively as a single unit. The sport of ultrarunning cultivates perseverance in the face of pain, fatigue, illness, and anything else. For that reason, to the untrained eye, it might seem to reward the self-sufficient and punish any kind of weakness. But the most experienced and highest-achieving ultrarunners learn that without support, it’s easy to wander aimlessly. And without a crew that you can honestly turn to for help, a crew that truly understands you, you won’t be able to help yourself. Even the most eccentric among us—and, yes, I am referring here to Speedgoat—depend on other people far more than an outsider might suppose.

  Of course, there’s something else you’ll always need, something that other people can never give you. Sleep.

  Around 10:00 p.m. on day forty-three, we were running along the narrow edge of a cliff above a river. The sound of the running water lulled me toward sleep, and I felt myself drifting in and out of full consciousness.

  In a desperate voice, I told Toph that I was falling asleep while walking, and I was worried I might sleepwalk to my death. He looked back at me and studied my face. Topher not only ran, he also ran businesses. I knew he was experienced in judging this type of situation, the situation being whether or not to believe me and then whether or not to give me what I wanted. Tough love meant pushing me on in spite of my protests. I had wanted Topher to come out here to support me, not to pamper me or serve as my butler. I got what I wanted.

  “As soon as I find a spot,” he said. And so we continued, and I continued to stagger on, half asleep. There was no room to pitch even our tiny tent, so we went another mile or two until we finally found a place where the trail opened wider than shoulder width. Topher and Krissy got the tent up almost instantly, directly on the trail, and I lay back and was suddenly asleep.

  They set an alarm to go off in two hours, at 4:45 a.m., and hunkered down shoulder to shoulder in makeshift bivy sacks made from their down jackets and a bug net. They later told me they fell asleep making jokes about the definition of friendship. As in, this must be it, or why the hell else would they be lying on the trail under one sleeping bag for me?

  The long last day continued two hours later. In the dark gray predawn light, Krissy and Topher woke me up and sent me down the trail by myself for a few minutes while they took down the tent and gathered our stuff. As I shuffled off, I remembered something that Speedgoat had told me about getting to the Hundred-Mile Wilderness. “You don’t have to rally at that point,” he’d said, “you just need to keep walking on the AT treadmill, three and a half miles per hour.” So I kept walking, picked up the pace, and settled into the hurried quickstep that had carried me north for so many miles.

  On the morning of day forty-four, we reached the banks of the Kennebec River, a clear, fast-moving, and deceptively friendly-looking body of water. Compared with the countless narrow rivers and streams I’d crossed thus far, the Kennebec seemed like a lake. It looked shallow enough to ford, but we understood that several people had died trying to do that, tempted by its apparent placidness. It was known to NoBo hikers as a kind of lock on the last door into the final push, and you couldn’t open it without a key—or a crowbar.

  Luckily my A-Team crew was already on top of this. They found the canoes stashed by the river for us and paddled across.

  “We live in Maine,” John said. “If we don’t know how to paddle canoes, we don’t deserve to be here.”

  When we got across, the last strategic meeting before entering the southern end of the Hundred-Mile Wilderness was convened with lightning speed. Walter and Ralsty would run the first leg of the wilderness with me, so they helped the Trail Monsters throw the gear we’d need into their packs, keeping mine as light as possible.

  The Hundred-Mile Wilderness was like nothing that had come before it. For starters, it had the strange distinction of being a gated section of the trail, a wilderness that could be accessed by a labyrinth of logging roads with trapdoors. The gated roads had hard open and closed hours, which meant that my crew wasn’t just running according to one schedule—ours—we were running on someone else’s. It was a life-size video game that required precision skill and a lot of luck.

  At the entrance of the Hundred-Mile Wilderness stood a sign that read CAUTION. THERE ARE NO PLACES TO OBTAIN SUPPLIES OR GET HELP UNTIL ABOL BRIDGE, 100 MILES NORTH. DO NOT ATTEMPT THIS SECTION UNLESS YOU HAVE A MINIMUM OF 10 DAYS SUPPLIES AND ARE FULLY EQUIPPED. THIS IS THE LONGEST WILDERNESS SECTION OF THE ENTIRE “AT” AND ITS DIFFICULTY SHOULD NOT BE UNDERESTIMATED. GOOD HIKING!

  In 2013, a sixty-six-year-old thru-hiker named Geraldine Largay stepped off the AT in Maine the recommended two hundred feet to relieve herself. Her body was found less than two miles from the trail. She had wandered, lost, for twenty-six days before dying of starvation.

  She left a note in a Ziploc bag. It said: When you find my body, please call my husband George and my daughter Kerry. It will be the greatest kindness for them to know that I am dead and where you found me—no matter how many years from now.

  The woods were so thick that her body wasn’t found for two years.

  We had two days and a few hours left. Every minute we could save would come back to us tenfold.

  The trail began by bobbing up and down, making it nearly impossible for anyone to fall into a steady stride. Every hour,
it seemed, we climbed a thousand feet over uneven piles of broken boulders, hopping over knife-edged rocks and struggling not to bruise and scratch our ankles and legs. The landscape, strewn with giant stones, looked like the site of a major earthquake. Then we’d go down, at least a thousand feet at a time. The trail sank into marshes and swamps with roots that reached up to our shins, forcing us into awkward stutter steps and causing plenty of falls.

  Having Ralsty around really did make me feel better. His mere presence was a constant reminder of just how much a body and mind could endure without breaking. Not only had he gone 127 hours without sleep, he’d cut off his arm without anesthesia. And apparently, he hadn’t suffered any lasting damage to his nerves, brain, or major organs. He was still extremely athletic, seemed to suffer no post-traumatic stress symptoms, and he didn’t avoid taking calculated risks. I mean, he was out here, after all.

  I knew that Ralsty was a good alpine skier, climber, and mountaineer. But I’d never known how supernaturally sure-footed he was until, as we were trying to make up time on a sharp descent, hopping and skipping over jagged rocks, he started reading a lengthy article to me on his phone to keep my mind awake. He read the whole thing, not even pausing as he leaped from rock to rock like a mountain goat.

  But Ralsty, like Horty and the Speedgoat and many of my other friends, was full of contradictions. Maybe it’s an ultrarunner thing. Maybe it’s a human thing. In any case, my friends could sure be peculiar. Case in point: here was a man who’d endured something most people can’t even imagine— yet he didn’t like getting dirty. He would take off his shoes and socks every time we crossed a stream so he wouldn’t get sand in them, and he insisted on bathing as thoroughly as possible whenever it was even remotely feasible. Meanwhile, I was beginning to look semi-decomposed. Timmy, who was friends with Ralsty from their many wilderness outings, curiously maintained that “anyone who declares a war on dust obviously has too much time on their hand.”

  With Ralsty setting the pace, we seized every opportunity the trail gave us to open up and run. The afternoon stretched on for what felt like an eternity before suddenly sinking into the soft glow of twilight. We put on our headlamps as the deep-woods darkness brought the stars into stark relief, their points glittering so brightly that they looked almost artificial in their clarity.

  We ran into day forty-six and beyond. The sun rose. My hands were shaking. My bones protuded.

  At 5:00 a.m., we officially had thirty-six hours to break the record. I was sixty-three miles from the end of the line.

  Later in the afternoon, Ralsty and I took a short side trail to reach the peaceful shores of Pemadumcook Lake, and finally there it was, the destination of this perpetual odyssey: Katahdin.

  When I saw it for the first time, the realization was like suddenly seeing the glow from a lighthouse after floating hopelessly lost at sea: salvation. It hit me like a rogue wave. It was real, and it was near. Near enough.

  Forty-eight miles to be exact.

  We were about to find out if I had any El Venado left, if the Web Walker could break through the internal webs that had covered my fighting spirit.

  JLu and Walter came out to do eight miles with me before the next crossing. I recall them running ahead and talking about how slow I was going as if I weren’t there, the way you might talk about a baby or someone confused by dementia. I wasn’t resentful. I understood. I was locked in a purgatory between dreamland and reality and couldn’t function properly in either.

  In addition to my hands and eyes and skin and bones all giving out, now my back suddenly decided to malfunction in a strange and horrible way. It spasmed and seized up almost constantly. For the first time, I didn’t feel like I was merely in pain; I felt like I was actually losing my own body. Like someone or something else was taking over. More than the FKT, more than Katahdin, I just wanted to feel justified, even if that meant using up my body completely.

  The night descended, for the last time on my journey. It was 9:00 p.m. on day forty-six and we were thirty-two miles from Katahdin. At Pollywog Stream crossing, my crew was wearing what looked like hazmat suits made out of bug netting because of the mosquitoes and biting flies. I didn’t even notice the carnage the insects were inflicting on my bare skin.

  I knew I had one more opportunity to sleep before we made the final push. I also knew I couldn’t sleep just yet. Toph had scheduled seventeen more miles that night, but I couldn’t do it.

  Topher and Krissy were packed and ready for the night shift, and they had all of my stuff ready to go. Then my body just stopped working. I felt it coming on before it fully hit: “Toph,” I said, “I need to sleep here. I’ve gotta stop. We can make up the difference tomorrow.”

  “Scott, I promise you we’ll let you sleep, but let’s get to Golden Road and then you can get a solid four hours.”

  I threw up my hands and tried saying no, but he quickly handed me a cup of cold instant coffee and I choked it down. I needed high-grade pharmaceuticals or a Breaking Bad barista, but the only other stimulant we had was yerba maté. Nothing put a dent in my sleepiness.

  I suddenly got a crazy spasm in the middle of my back and couldn’t stay upright. I hunched over while Krissy tried to massage it enough for me to stand. I felt like my whole body was breaking down, and whatever strength I was squeezing out of it now was the last I had. I had no idea what would happen when that was gone. I was all out of hidden reservoirs; there were no untapped resources.

  We got to the crossing at Golden Road, near the base of Katahdin, at about 4:45 a.m. I’d done 47.6 miles that day. In the four days immediately following Galehead, I’d averaged twenty-eight miles a day. In the five days since then, I’d averaged forty-six. Not because I had any speed left—I didn’t—but because I’d slept only seven hours total in the past three nights.

  We were out of the Hundred-Mile Wilderness. All that was left was the fifteen-mile runway to the summit of Katahdin.

  I could finally sleep now. All I’d been able to think about for the past twenty hours was sleeping four hours straight, something I hadn’t done in days. Days that seemed a lifetime ago.

  * * *

  I was exhausted but couldn’t sleep. On the night of day forty-six, we were at the flanks of Katahdin. It was amazing and awesome to finally see it, the previously abstract thing that had drawn us all the way from Georgia.

  I couldn’t sleep because Jurker was late—again. Although we were close to the finish, I was far from confident. Walter and I had covered 8 miles with him that afternoon in about four hours. He was moving ridiculously slowly, and every bathroom break seemed to take forever. It was as if he fell asleep every time his feet stopped moving. When the three of us got to Pollywog Stream, where the crew was waiting, it was already dark and well past the time we’d hoped to arrive. I knew Jurker wanted to crawl into the van, but he still had seventeen miles to go that night. I was starting to worry about physical limits.

  But Toph told him he had to get those miles done. He promised him four hours of sleep once he reached Golden Road. Ralsty gave him an all-time inspirational pep talk, and if there was any guy who could speak on the topic of sleep deprivation, it was Ralsty.

  I certainly couldn’t be encouraging. I wanted to lock Scott inside Castle Black and drive him far away from this trail. I feared he was doing permanent damage to his body, to his nervous system, to his mind. He was a shell of himself; I had never seen him go this deep and this dark, ever. I remember telling him back in Boulder that I didn’t want to see any half-assed effort, and apparently he took that to heart. More than anything, I just wanted him to stop here and sleep.

  But that’s why he had the A Team here. Toph and Krissy were the masters of triage, fully capable of managing any crisis. They knew how to motivate and push him better than I did. I didn’t say anything; all I could do was let the others take control.

  So late on day forty-six, when he asked for truck-stop-grade stimulants, I suppressed my instinct to yank him aside and tuck him int
o bed in Castle Black. He was delirious. I think he would have taken anything to keep him awake. Instead, he made do with two coconut-milk cappuccinos and caffeinated Clif Shots and hit the trail again.

  It hurt me to see him go. It ripped my heart out. My high-priced thoroughbred had become a low-rent donkey. He had been on the trail around the clock the past four days. We didn’t have time to talk, so I didn’t know where his head was or if it was even still there.

  Maybe that was for the best. I didn’t know how much of his suffering I could handle.

  I was also dealing with something of my own.

  Right before we got to the crux of the Kennebec, exactly eight weeks after my D and C surgery, I finally got my period back. Dr. Flagg had warned me it could be heavier than normal, but I wasn’t expecting this. It was like the Red Wedding scene from Game of Thrones; I was almost worried I’d bleed out in the middle of the wilderness. There was no prospect of finding a doctor or even a shower anywhere. I didn’t dare mention it to Jurker, though. I knew he would freak out and end our trip immediately.

  Thank goodness Krissy was with me. She drove off and found me some ginormous pads and a laundromat. Fortunately, over the next few days, the bleeding subsided and eventually stopped.

  With my medical distraction behind me, I was free to focus all my worries on Jurker once again. Did something catastrophic happen? We’d been expecting him for hours, and I grew increasingly anxious. Here on Golden Road, Walter was already passed out in a tent, Kim and Ralsty were sleeping in their rental cars, and I was nervously organizing Castle Black. The sun had already started to rise when Jurker and the night shift finally arrived. I ran out to meet them. Krissy was in tears.

  “JLu, we pushed him too far. He can’t even move; he’s tripping on everything. I’ve never seen him like this before.” She was so obviously upset, it scared me. This was the no-holds-barred guidance we needed, yet it was something I couldn’t bear to do: help Jurker hurt himself. Krissy and Toph’s capacity to carry out the mission of all the people who came to help and all those who followed along online was damn near heroic. They were like torchbearers who just ran the final leg into the stadium to ignite the Olympic flame.