JMT unsupported – Sean Ranney

He’s over Donohue now, and was atop it around 8:25am.

If my math is right, he’ll need to average around 4.60 mph to match Andy’s time (with a ~4pm finish at Happy Isles). That was his tertiary goal.

To go sub-four day–goal B–he only needs to average 1.70 mph. That would be a ~5:00 am finish, tomorrow morning.

And to meet his goal numero uno–just finishing–he can crawl =D.

Peter, I think you are correct – he’s looking at a minimum of 10 hours from Donahue Pass to the finish – and that is pretty optimistic, it could easily take a lot longer depending on how he’s feeling. So the FKT is out of reach at this point, but he should be able to get under 4 days as long as he keeps his moving to napping ratio in positive territory.

Edit: Adam, although you are likely the #1 Armchair Fastpacker in the world, I have to say you are wrong on this one. Crawling is not a recommended strategy as it puts one closer to the ground and inevitably leads to excessive napping.

Sean is down from Donohue and moving at a good clip (~3 mph) down Lyell Canyon.

Seems like he still might have a shot at second fastest known time–he’d have to beat Brett’s time, which was 3h 13m behind Andy’s. Sean would have to manage about 3.3 mph for the remainder, if my math is right. Definitely a challenge, but possible? It would all be under daylight, predominantly descending.

Otherwise, if he’s able to keep moving, he should come in third–Popov came in at 4d 5h 25m (edit: third male, but as Allen points out below, Amber has the third faster unsupported time at 4d 5h 6m).

Anybody want to hazard a guess at finishing time =p? We’re at about that point!

Sean is on the homestretch now and he didn’t bail at Tuolumne so it looks like he’s definitely going to finish by this evening! I’m going to guess 8:24 PM, allowing 7 hours from the Cathedral Lakes trailhead junction, where he pinged at 1:24 pm. Brett’s time was 3d14h13m which would be about 7:18 pm for Sean, or less than 6 hours from Cathedral lakes. I’m sure he could do that when fresh, but unlikely in the state that he is likely in. I think that section took me about 5:45 on a training run, fresh and with just a light day pack. If he manages to beat Brett’s time I’ll be blown away, but even getting within an hour or two would be a huge accomplishment. Whatever happens, this has been crazy impressive and fun to watch – go Sean!!!!

Edit to add that Amber Monforte Weibel has the 3rd fastest overall Unsupported time at 4d5h6m, which is also the fastest Female Unsupported time.

Good catch on Amber’s time.

Ye of little faith! I think Sean could make 7:17pm if he knew and cared about beating Brett’s time. Just not sure that’s on his radar, at the moment.

With that in mind, I’ll guess 7:55pm.

Sean is going to give Brett a run for his money!

He’s been averaging around 3.7 mph since Cathedral Pass. If he can keep that up to the finish, he will be neck and neck with Brett’s time at the finish!

He’s just above Clark Point at 6:53 pm. Something like 1.7 miles to go, with something like 24 minutes to tie Brett…

Unbelievable! incredibly strong finish – but is he done or not???? Spot hasn’t updated since 6:53 pm but he might well be done by now!?!?!

Nail biter for the 2nd fastest unsupported time!  I wonder what happened last night – that’s where he lost the FKT.

He very well may be done–but no way to know for sure. Sometimes the Spot messages are delayed, then show up within the hour, so some still may show up.

Regardless, probably need a boots-on-the-ground confirmation for actual finish time.

We need to get a Spot repeater installed in Yosemite Valley solely for this purpose.

Good lord can people just start using InReach Mini’s for FKTs already?

Well, seems likely we won’t determine anything tonight, unless something pops up on social media, or he reaches out to one of you that he knows. Sean had a shot at Brett’s time–if his last ping was accurate, then he needed to cover the last 1.8 miles at about a 4.5 mph pace.

My thoughts;

• Congrats to Sean! Epic run–pretty rarefied air up there in the sub-4 day club. Population: 2 3? Kudos!
• Every time somebody takes a shot at the FKT, and comes up a little short (or a lot short, in other cases)–it underscores what an impressive time Andy Bentz set. Kudos again, Andy!

BREAKING NEWS!!!!!

from Sean Ranney via Facebook:

“John Muir Trail Unsupprted third fastest known time of 86h 17m. Andrew Bentz is still the man.”

“Btw, if I had looked at my watch a little earlier I may have skipped using the bathroom at the top of Nevada falls and made more of a run at Brett’s 86h13m”

Just got home, wanted to give a few details since I’ve had some questions. Thanks a ton for all the support, it’s exciting to see people interested in our silly endeavors.  I’m ecstatic with how things turned out, based on last year’s trip I figured 4 days would be a stretch and had put the record basically out of my mind.  Not that I wasn’t doing the math on the trail, but I far exceeded what I had set out to do.

I’ll put together a full trip report in (hopefully) the next few weeks, but here’s the basics:

Felt great this year, enjoyed about 80% of the trip, with 15% of it  meh and 5% as “I’m so $#&@^$# over this”.  Last year the ratios was probably 30/40/30.  Enjoying myself certainly produced faster times.  Yes, I jogged whatever downhills I could, even if it was only 10-20′.  I’m (comparatively) not that fast of a walker so this is where I was able to make up time.  I had a starting weight of 14.5#, 9 of which was food, and stashed my poles in my pack for the downhills so I wasn’t tempted to use them to slow myself down.  Legs felt good all the way through, although the feet are pretty bruised and sore (but only one blister!!)

So the sleep thing on the third night.  I had a deep dark lull making my way from Virginia lake to the downhills to Reds, that section just seemed to go on forever and I was getting pretty frustrated.  I was out of water so couldn’t eat anything, so the only thing I could think of to to break myself out of the funk was to start hammering the downhills and produce some endorphins.  This worked, and by the time I got to Reds I was feeling good again.  My plan was to sleep a few hours when it got dark, which I tried to do but couldn’t sleep since I was still jacked up from the run down to reds.  Since I couldn’t sleep, I popped a few vivarins and pushed up the hill, which was a bad idea and left me loopy.  I barely remember going to sleep that night, and I’m not sure how long I was out for but slept until about 3.30 AM, at which point I fired back up and was able to keep my act together.  Managed to hold on to the finish after this.

Also, I had sort of forgotten about Brett’s time since Cathedral pass (and it’s subsequent ridges) took forever.  I though I was hours behind him.  As I was coming down the last switchbacks from Nevada Falls I changed my watch to elapsed time and realized I was neck and neck with him.  I broke into a dead sprint for the last two miles, but they obviously installed a few extra switchbacks and uphills around Vernal falls, so I let it go and finished 4 minutes back of him.  Looking back, probably shouldn’t have used the bathroom and lounged in the river at the top of Nevada Falls.

Here’s my splits (in elapsed time), I took pictures on top of most of the passes so these are more accurate than the spot tracks:

Whitney – 3.41

Forrester – 9.17

Glen – 12.44

Rest at woods Creek – 4 hours

Pinchot – 22.30

Mather – 25.57

Muir – 33.18

Rest at bottom of Muir/Seldon – 4.30

Seldon – 45.54 (approximate)

Slver – 53.29 (approximate)

Reds – 61.35 (approximate)

4-5ish hours rest total on the way up to Shadow lake?

Donahue – 75.25

Finish (Sign at Happy Isles) – 86.13

Amazing.

I’d be curious to hear what the 24 hours after finishing are like. How did you feel? How long did you sleep? Is it hard to transition to being off the trail?

Feeling surprisingly good from the ankles up.  The feet are pretty beat up, I only got one dime size blister but the bottoms are pretty bruised around the forefoot, and I’m going to lose both big toenails.  I’m run down and hungry with a touch of a cold, but overall nowhere as devastated as I expected or have been in the past.  My mouth is still full of sores from all the forced eating, I’ve had a bit of this before but nothing to this extent or that lasted as long, it’s annoying but not a big deal.  Very little muscle soreness, way less than after the 100k I ran earlier this year or after last year’s aborted JMT attempt.

After finishing I got back to the car and got situated, then showered at Curry Village and headed out of the valley.  Got a room and a meal at Buck Meadows and tried to sleep around 10.30, but sleep was spotty and I was up a fair amount that night.  Got up and drove home to Sacramento around 7, took a couple hour nap in the afternoon, and again had spotty sleep at night.  Made it to work Thursday morning and back to real life, slept well on Thursday night.  None of this is unusual, I’ve always had a few nights of restless sleep after a big event.

I’m expecting the physical recovery to take a few more days to feel right, it takes surprisingly little time to get back to an even keel.  The body is an amazing system and very good  at righting the ship, I’ll probably get a bike ride in today (friday) and this weekend, and start easy jogging next week as the feet feel up to it.  I’ve found that it usually takes around 2-3 weeks to get much pop back in the legs, but it always comes back reasonably quickly.

Mentally, I’m not sure how long it will take.  It usually takes 5 weeks to get back to a mentally engaged state where I’m excited about training and another event, but I suspect this will take longer.  Last year (when I had to pull off just before Donahue), it took until the new year (4 months!!) before I felt like I wanted to push myself much.  But success breeds good moods, so hopefully I’ll be back at it sooner rather than later and will be interested to see what the next thing is to put butterflies in my belly.

I’ve been working on the JMT project for over three years and ecstatic to see it come to fruition.  Thanks again for all the kind words and support, and hope you chase whatever excites you, FOMO be damned.

Have fun!!

“hope you chase whatever excites you”

Thats a very nice sentiment :)

Thanks for sharing your post-hike experience. I’m particularly impressed that you were back to work so quickly. I can’t imagine shifting gears like that.

Awesome to watch along from Australia Sean, thanks and well done! I’m sure all the nerds on here would love to see your gear list and review sometime :-)