The Ranger Marathon is walking from the most northern camp, Dan Beard, to the most southern camp on Philmont property, Carson Meadows, in 24 hours. It's a 40 to 46 mile trek depending on the route you take. Our route was about 42-43 miles long. I was going with two other guys, Kieran Meyer and Mark Kelley. We started by getting to Dan Beard the day before and relaxing up there. The staff there was really cool. They fed us and showed us to a really cool place north of the camp. While we were up there, we saw fresh bear and mountain lion tracks and we were as close to the Valle as we could be without getting arrested. We then slept on the roof of the cabin and waited until the next day.
At 4 am I wake up to the alarm on my watch. It's freezing at this point. I wake Kieren up, who's on the roof with me. We climb down to see Mark, who was sleeping on the porch, already awake and packing up his gear. We fill up on water and leave a note for the guys at Dan Beard thanking them for their hospitality. At about 4:45 we leave the porch and I start my timer. It's still dark, and we're in the heart of mountain lion territory, so that was a bit nerve racking, but even worse, I immediatley start feeling a hot spot. For those of you who don't know, a hot spot is a sign that a blister is forming. I wait until we get to Ponil, which is a six mile hike, to put mole skin on it. After I do, my feet feel a bit safer, but I knew that it wasn't going to last the whole trip.
After about 5 hours, we make it to the Cimarron River, which means we were officially leaving the North Country. We take our first break underneath a bridge. A crew asks if we were going to Devil's Wash Basin, which is where they were going. "Uhh... A little further than that," We say. After another 3 hours of hiking, we end up at Ute Gultch Commisary, which was roughly our halfway point at 22 miles. We take a good 45 minute break there while eating lunch and filling up on water. After that we keep moving, know that soon we were going over the hardest point on our trek, Shaefer's Pass.
This was the roughest point, especially for me. I felt like I just hit a wll, which is kind of expected after hiking 30 miles then climbing a mountain. Without the moral support of the other Rangers, I probably would have given up right there. We make it to the top and we all know that the hardest part is over. We had 12 miles left to do and we weren't going to give up after we had gone so far. We zipped up our mansuits and proceeded to hike the rest of the way up. When it started getting dark, all conversation was replaced with the occasional, "Ow" "Ouch" "Dammit". Our feet were absolutly dying at this point.
We make it to Abreu, which is the last camp before Carson Meadows and hang out on their porch with the staff for a bit. It's about 10:00 pm at this point. I'm sitting on the porch swing and suddenly I feel like I'm getting a sort of lack of motion sickness. Sitting still after walkng for so longhas made me a bit sick. I get a trash bag from the staff at the camp and with no time to spare. I throw up what ever contents I had in my stomach into this trash bag. There wasn't much seeing that we didn't really have much time to eat. After that, I first apologized to Abreu, then felt a whole lot better. I began to think why I felt so sick in such a short period of time. Then I remembered, "Oh right. I just hiked 40 miles in 17 hours."
We headed towards Carson Meadows and got there much faster than we thought we would. We stopped at the bottom of the steps on the porch and I pulled up my timer. We climbed up and the moment our feet hit the porch, I stopped the watch. 18 hours, 29 minutes and 23 seconds. We had made it. There were a few staff members who were still awake. It was about 11 pm at this point. We ask them if we could crash on their porch and they let us. We set up our sleeping gear and as we take off our boots, we realize how much pain our feet our in. I could feel the pulse in my feet as they would n stop throbbing all night long and into the morning. However, for every ounce of pain we felt and for how exhausted we were, in the end it was all worth it. We hiked the distance from my house to DC in one day. It was the most challenging thing I've probably ever encoutered and we did it.
I'll try to get another post on here before I leave for back home. I got three more weeks until I can see you all again. Until then, see you all later.
