Tackling the 3 digits trail running - 100km in Whistler
The Whistler Alpine Meadows 100 Miler was supposed to happen Sept 25, 26 and 27 2020, but a little virus disrupted the world’s order and it ended up being cancelled. We trained for it, had rent a yurt for this long week end of trail running and wanted to explore these long mileage endeavours. We decided last fall to just do it, “just” might have been a bit pretentious actually…
The plan was to run 60km the Friday, 60km the Saturday and finish the remaining 40.93km on Sunday. It would be without any assistance, just the two of us – father and son to keep on our family trail run endeavours when we started training in January 2020.
Our drive to Whistler Thursday evening was quite something. Rain poured, you know the pouring that makes you slow down as you don’t see a thing, that’s how much it rained! And then we arrived at the yurt to enjoy, let’s say, a musical moment…
Have you ever experience be inside a drum during a psychedelic jam session?… Just spend a night in a yurt during a heavy pouring storm. This is it. But, and that’s where the mind is amazing, you realize you’re in fact in the middle of the mountain, when temperature is not yet too cold, dry, under a good layer of warm duvet and step by step, you calm down and enjoy the night.
Wake up time at 7:00am, the rain is still pouring, we eat something warm and fulfilling and without too much to think get started! The spirit is high, we have enough food and our two blue ponchos are protecting us.
The first part consisted to hike up from the Meadow Park Sports Centre using the Skywalk trail. Once we reached a certain altitude, we stayed along the mountain, North of Whistler, passed 21 Mile Creek, hiked down to Hot Dog Alley, reached Alta Lake at Rainbow Park, ran on the Valley Trail, passed at Creek side on the other side of the mountain (on the South side of the Sea to Sky Highway) and reached what we would called our Four Stars Restaurant, aka the bus stop near Function Junction.
It is 1:42pm, we ran 5 hours, time to refill the body. Cold pasta with cheese made the cut and it felt amazing!
When you have food in your belly, you can think a bit straighter.
We realized: 1– it’d be difficult to follow exactly the 100 miler path as, obviously, no signs indicated the way and 2– we might have difficulties to keep the same pace as if we were in the race as without assistance, we had to carry our food, clothes and the weight of our backpack.
The decision was to try to follow as closely as possible and check regularly our progress. The plan for the afternoon was to hike/run South towards Squamish on the Sea to Sky trail, make a big loop, come back to our Four Stars Restaurant in the evening, have another go at our delicious pastas and decide later regarding how we would spend the night.
When we left our fancy restaurant, the rain was still coming down at us. Along the ponchos, gaiters are the next items to wear. Ours are very light and so efficient at keeping water, dirt and small stones at bay. We followed logging roads, one was particularly interesting as, due to the heavy rain, streams with big running waters sliced our progression. It was a bit tricky sometimes to cross but wonderful to hear the noise and it became even amazing when the rain started fading.
We were up in the forest, totally under a new weather – What a change! The logging roads brought us towards Black Tusk and we decided to start going South. At one point the trail pointed South East, as long as we were heading back to Function Junction, we were happy. It would take a while though and we end up arriving at the bus stop at 7:15pm.
The Cheakamus River, running down hard from the Cheakamus lake. Sheer power of Nature. We, humans beings, are just little guests, part of the eco system, no more…
During this leg, unfortunately, Clem slid on a hidden root while hiking down a small trail. Pretty soon, his knee started bothering him. After 10 hours of exercice and when you know that you still will go for another 2 hours at least, we had to rethink our goals of finishing the 160.94 km – 100 miles.
In the real race, when you arrive near Function Junction, the path goes back to Creekside and goes up towards the top of Whistler mountain. After an entire day hiking/running 3/4 of the time under the rain, plus a knee out of four not in the best shape, the decision was made that we’d hike back to our yurt, spend the night, assess the next morning how Clem was feeling. In the last 15 km we decided to ditch “miles” and adopted “km” but to keep the number 100. We made sure to have completed 60km this evening when we hit our yurt at 10:27pm.
Saturday 26th, 2020. Wake up time 7:00am. Clem decided to give a try, securing his leg with a professionally taped knee – Youtube is fantastic, as long as you have wifi! It’s not raining and we’re aiming for 40km. This time the plan is to hike up to Singing Pass, reach Flute Summit and go back to the Yurt.
We know very well the trail going up to Singing Pass. And in this fall morning, the smell of the forest, the noise of the streams, birds, wind in the trees accompanied us. The pace is quite slow, we can feel our bodies, legs from the previous day. Clem’s knee seemed to agree to cooperate and it will indeed. Mind over the matter, mental fitness. This first ascent to Singing Pass was joyful even though at the end, it’s a never ending process to finally see the sign indicating “Russet Lake” straight ahead, “Musical Bumps”, turn right.
The more we hiked up, the shyer the sun became… We could see it in and out.
OK, after these trees, we’ll see the sign... Yeah… Right…
Passing Singing Pass, en route to the alpine meadows.
It is now 1:00pm, 4 hours of hiking up. Before tackling the last part to reach Flute Summit, we stopped to feed us, knowing that we had our special Dish, with a capital D – Brendan Brazier’s Cashew Chocolate Mousse Layer Cake! As the saying says: "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's”, this cake is Brazier’s! It entered our family’s routine, whenever somebody is tackling any long haul endurance endeavour. Just preparing the cake on a two days period propels you in the mood for the coming journey. It’s fantastic, delicious, with lots of nuts, chocolate, seeds and cacao nibs.
This is exactly what we needed for the last 27km of our journey.
As soon as you leave Singing Pass, the trail goes up in the mountain to reach some sort of plateau. During summer, flowers and insects populate these alpine meadows, in the fall all this life disappears and the higher you get, the more you feel you’re about to enter into Mordor. Tolkien must have spent quite a number of rough fall season here.
At the summit, we realized we needed to hike a bit more to cover the first 20km as we didn’t want to arrive at the yurt and have to walk around it to reach the 40km. At this point, it’s cold, we’re tired and we needed carefully to plan to avoid any additional distance.
We reached the 20km mark, and turned back. Funny answer when I asked Clem how his knee was doing: “Oh I don’t feel my knee anymore… my legs are killing me!” I felt the same way.
On the positive side, every step made us closer to the finish line and we were little by little escaping Mordor. 20km to go, thankfully hiking down.
Last but not least, we were by ourselves in the mountains, it was mystical, unique and even though our legs were killing us, our minds were up high in the sky. We felt the luckiest person on earth to have the luxury to experience these moments.
To boost our moral, while we were still hiking down, we reserved two spots at Creekbread for a pizza and beer!
Finally at 7:35:42 PM, we hit the 40km mark, finishing our 100km journey.
35 hours is a long journey. But worth every second. As usual, embarking on these long endeavours has a huge mental component. It’s a family affair, it’s exhilarating, a special moment which make you feel very fortunate to be able to experience it fully.
