A couple months prior to the event, I received an invitation to the Facebook group Desolate Peaks. I think Scott Martin probably invited me, and the group description had me hooked instantly:
The 17-step program eluded to is this amazing peak-bagging challenge laid out in the Desolation Wilderness Southwest of Lake Tahoe. The standard challenge is 17 peaks with a time limit of 30 hours (with an option of 4 more called Lucifer’s Challenge that nobody has yet completed). There are two checkpoints where you can access a drop-bag or drop out. The coolest part to me is that there are lots of options on how to get between the peaks and you don’t have to take a specific route. For example you can take an established trail which is a longer distance or you can choose to bushwack and route-find that yields shorter distance but more difficult terrain. It’s almost always a trade-off between technical difficulty and distance. All that really matters is that you get the peaks as fast as possible, which is verified by GPS or geolocated images. I created a map of the peaks and my route here: https://caltopo.com/m/4JTL
Around 60% of the route I took was off-trail, so navigation and familiarity with the terrain is essential to completing the challenge. I spent over a week fast-packing the course and route-finding prior to the event. I don’t think it’s likely that many people can just show up to this without course knowledge and complete it without assistance from others. There’s simply too many wrong turns to take and mistakes to be made, at least at my skill level.
Compared to any other race beside maybe my first ultra, Desolate Peaks may have caused me the most pre-event anxiety. Just hiking a portion of the course is hard for many reasons including the elevation, exposed scrambles, technical ridges, heat, smoke, hard granite, endless talus, bushwacking and the general brutal nature of off-trail adventuring. Out of this anxiety I spent a lot of time scouting the route ahead of time and buying stuff like an extra headlamp, a Garmin InReach Mini, and even some calf compression sleeves to afford some shin protection during the bushwacking sections (I never actually wore them, I just bled like everyone else).
The 43 mile Desolation Peaks took longer than most 100 mile mountain races that I’ve run. For contrast, I completed the Cascade Crest 100 with ~23,000 ft of elevation gain in 23 hours, but this 43 mile route with 16,900 ft of gain took me more than 2 hours longer. I don’t think they’re comparable sports- there were only a couple miles that I could actually run of Desolation Peaks. Most of the time it’s hiking and climbing and scrambling and hopping boulders. The course was way more fun than a standard ultra race to navigate and generally experience, and I’m looking forward to finding more challenges like this. I highly recommend the challenge, and if you can spend some time scouting out and running the challenge you’ll probably enjoy it too. Look up Desolate Peaks group on Facebook for more information.
Feel free to use my map/activity data at these locations:
https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/7189429461
Philip Brundage's wanderings 