Francois D'Haene JMT

Since this weird system Francois is using doesn’t leave “breadcrumbs”, maybe we can crowd source that. If you check the track post where he’s at and the time?

<p style=”padding-left: 30px;”>I think he started at 10am, and someone reported he got to the summit & back to Trail Crest in 3h28m.</p>

A couple reports:

“Francois is ahead of Leor by 20 min at Tyndall Creek.”

“30 min @ Forester Pass”

(edit: Table updated through the Happy Isles)

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(original post below)

If I’m reading his tracker website correctly, he’s approaching Woods Creek at around 12h 46m elapased.

I have Leor arriving at Woods Creek around 14h 26m, so Francois may have an hour or so on Leor at this point.

It looks like you can get his breadcrumb history–if you mouse over the “timeline” that is just below the map, your cursor turns into an arrow, and you can use that to drag the timeline around, and see where he was earlier.

Tomorrow I’ll tabulate some of that to see what we can figure out about splits.

Was nice to see some of the prep and built up to the start on fb.

Some updates:

“13.5 hours into the FKT attempt, François is feeling good – he took a 40 minutes break at 70km and is making steady progress – approx an hour and a half faster than the current record – heading into the first night.”

And then:

“Deep into the first freezing night of his JohnMuirTrailAdventure2017 – François D’haene is closing in on 100km completed of the iconic 340+km trail after 18h 30m.”

It’s probably just GPS error but it kinda looks like he took a right and is headed over Bishop Pass.

I’m sure it will be clear if he bailed soon.

8:25am at the Bishop Pass jct, likely getting aid.

“Deep into the first freezing night of his JohnMuirTrailAdventure2017 – François D’haene is closing in on 100km completed of the iconic 340+km trail after 18h 30m.”

Forecasted low temps are consistently below freezing at night (Into low 20*’s in some areas), I wonder how much this is/will be affecting his pace, I would imagine below freezing temps may make some sections of the trail a bit slippery during night lows?  I know he wanted to wait until the 14th to avoid quota issues on the JMT but perhaps he should have tried a bit earlier?

No movement of the tracker for quite a while. Maybe it stopped working. I don’t think the cold should affect things, except they’ll have to be careful his water doesn’t freeze (but you can always get water on the JMT). Cold does create a potential safety issue – if he stops moving he can get hypothermia quickly. Hopefully he has a pacer carrying some emergency gear.

I added a table with splits to my previous post. Parsing that tracking site for the ping history is not tremendously fun.

There were a few pings from his GPS shortly after he arrived at Bishop Pass, but nothing since. I wonder if it was turned off and not turned back on.

A rest break at the Bishop Pass junction would be logical, but it’s been over six hours since his tracker updated–I’d be surprised if he were willing to give up six hours of daylight for rest.

That said, he moved extremely well through last night.

Upon arrival at the Bishop Pass junction, he had about 9 hours on Leor’s time (!), but no rest to speak of. It’s still certainly an equivalent lead of around 4 hours–but of course, there’s a lot of trail left.

Hopefully we’ll hear from some of Francois’ support team when they exit Bishop Pass. If he didn’t stop for long at the junction, that might be quite soon.

<p style=”text-align: left;”>Looks like the tracker was “stuck”. He’s at least 6hr ahead at Muir Pass.</p>

Yep! Table updated through Muir Pass. I show him about 6h 5m ahead through Muir Pass, with most likely a comparable amount of rest.

Updated the table through Selden Pass.

He’s still looking incredibly strong, with no signs of slowing. He’s back to about 9 hours ahead of Leor, although Leor probably had a couple hours more rest at this point.

I will be extremely impressed if he continues to throw down >3.5 mph splits through the night tonight! Not that I’m not already extremely impressed, of course.

Tracker showing Purple Lake at 43h26m.

for those who don’t already know,

Francois has won UTMB (full course) twice, 2017 and 2014.

UTMB is Europe’s premier 100 mile race.

12h44m ahead of Leor at Duck Pass. Crushing!

Updated through Deer Creek; he’s doing phenomenal!

His Facebook page has a bunch of photos and videos. Francois is at Red’s now. Per his Facebook page, he plans to rest for just an hour or so at Red’s, then get moving again.

That would put him at something like 16 hours ahead of record pace, leaving Red’s.

He’s shown no signs of slowing thus far… If he keeps this up, he could be looking at a 62h-ish time from the Portal to Happy Isles. Yikes!

He’s on the move again. It looks like he stopped at Red’s for a few hours.

For some reason, my records of Leor’s time shows him breaking AFTER crossing the Middle Fork San Joaquin, but I’m pretty sure that’s erroneous. Anyway, it doesn’t matter much, but it puts Francois about 15h ahead of the record pace at the moment, not 10h.

Given his longer break at Red’s, I’ll bump my estimate out to 64h 30m… Essentially I’m estimating that he can average a bit over 3.8 mph from here on out. If the wheels stay on, I think that’s a middle of the road guess–a bit faster wouldn’t surprise me; a bit slower wouldn’t either (although it would imply that he is exhibiting a few symptoms of being human).

15 hours ahead at Garnet Lake!

Francois is basically atop Donohue now, and is approximately 15h 10m ahead of record pace.

Um it looks like he left the JMT and took the straight route to the Tuolumne Campground. Maybe he’s going to take a nap there and then backtrack? He’s certainly got time to go back. Either that or he took a wrong turn. I could hardly blame him if it’s an accident, I managed to miss the part of the trail north of Tioga Toad when I hiked the JMT.

I think the collective agreement among many (FKT-ers and NPS alike) is that the “official” JMT now runs south of Hwy. 120, instead of crossing it twice.

Also, updated the table through the Elizabeth Lake Junction… He’s still flying! 14h 56m ahead of pace.

(edit to add):

Looks like he did turn north at the Cathedral Lakes junction, and headed to the Cathedral Lakes TH on 120. Undoubtedly meeting crew, preparing for the final push. I wouldn’t expect a long break.

Excellent! I guess I did the official JMT by accident then. :)

Amazing.

Is he only gaining more time in the end?

Thanks Adam for crunching the numbers.