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Baldy Day

I’ve done longer runs and runs in worse conditions, but the run we did Saturday was one of top three or four hardest runs I’ve ever done.  And also one of the most rewarding.

Some basic stats:

• Distance: 24.9 miles
• Elevation gain: 11,329′
• Starting elevation: 4,386′ (Mt. Baldy village)
• Highest elevation: 10,064′ (Mt. Baldy peak)
• Total time: 9:09
• Running time: around 7:30-8:00

As The Bear 100 quickly approaches (less than five weeks now!), Lukas and I wanted to get in some good mountain running at elevation.  Since neither of us know the San Gabriels super well, we recruited Dom to take us on a tour of Mt. Baldy and the surrounding mountains.  He proposed a Bear Canyon-Mt. Baldy-Wrightwood route that he described as “gnarly” and “95% singletrack, 70% above 7,000ft, and 26 miles/12,000ft of gain”.  Those numbers sound pretty intense, but for some reason it never really registered what I was in for.

The run started at Mt. Baldy Village and immediately climbed 5,800 feet over the first 6.4 miles to the peak of Mt. Baldy at 10,064 feet.  We covered it – with lots of hiking – in 2:22.  6.4 miles in 2 hours, 22 minutes.    Almost 900 feet of gain per mile.  I was going to try to put that into perspective by comparing it to something else, but I can’t think of anything comparable right now!  The crazy thing is that that section wasn’t even close to the toughest section of the run.

We relaxed at the top of Baldy for a little bit, to catch our breath, have something to eat and take some pictures.

From there, it was a crazy technical descent, climb, climb, descent mostly on this loose shale where during the climbs, we struggled to keep up a 20 min/mile and during the descents, it took just about everything to maintain a “controlled” shale glissade without falling.  These climbs and descents were nasty – steep and super technical.

We made it to our turnaround point at Guffy campground in just under 5 hours.  We were all completely out of water, so thankfully spring water was flowing from the pipe.  We sat at Guffy for 15-20 minutes, drinking bottles and bottles of fresh water, eating while we hid in the shade, and refilled our packs and bottles before heading back out.

The way out has about 2/3 of the total climbing of the day, so the return should have been much easier going.  The problem was that the first 6 miles of the way back are back over those same slippery, steep, shale-covered climbs and descents.  If you look very closely at the photo below you might be able to see the twisty climb we had to do to get back up to the top of the first climb headed back.  (Actually, you probably can’t see it – I can barely find it and I was just there!)

The two “big” climbs on the way back are killer: the first is 1,400′ in 1.5 miles and the second is about 2,000′ in 1 mile.  We were exhausted, and trudging up those climbs nearly broke me.  But we just kept moving forward and finally made it back to the peak of Mt. Baldy.  We rested there for a while and I totally could have taken a nice long nap.

But we had a 6.4 mile, 5,800 foot descent to do.  And off we went.  I’d like to say that the descent felt really good and I bombed down it.  Instead, because of tired legs, some tight switchbacks and a grumpy knee, I just survived my way down.

In all, other than my AC100 race, it was my biggest single day of elevation gain – training or racing.  It was considerably more gain than either North Face 50 or White River 50, and both of those do the gain over twice as many miles.  On average, over the course of the 25 miles it’s about 450 feet/mile, but if you just look at the climbing, it’s definitely more than 900 feet/mile of gain (17% average grade!).

I can’t imagine finding much better Bear 100 prep in Southern California!  And with two more big weekends of training, I think I’m going to find myself back there a couple more times!