Preview:
The Barb Peterson Memorial Hike series is a Fall training hike exercise for the 35-mile Rachel Carson Trail Challenge, which is to take place on June 22, 2014. Today's hike covers the west end of the trail, from Dorseyville to North Park.
I will use this exercise to both familiarize myself with the trail, work on my left foot strength, and break in my new Salomon Speedcross 3 trail racing shoes. In addition, I will make a monetary donation to the organizer(s) and get to know a few of them and the participants.
My eventual goal for the challenge is to finish in the top 30, with a total time of approximately 9 hours, give or take. I can maintain a 11:50 or so pace on trails with decent hills, and aim to stay under 14:00/mile on race day, taking into account those huge hills the Rachel is famous for.
Subsequent organized training hikes will not take place until next June, three weeks before the event. Consequently, I may do my own training hikes with cheat sheets to cover the other sections this Fall.
Result:
9.5 miles / 2:45 (hike). We had a nice group of a dozen people, who all appeared to be older than me. The pace setter in the lead group (forget her name) set a nice brisk one, and I followed her closely. She had done the full challenge several times so I was trusting her skill. Despite, we still managed to get lost once in someone's field and had to backtrack a couple hundred feet. Directly after the hike, I made notes on the trail, including trouble spots and places to potentially get lost. Although the west end of the Rachel is seemingly the "easiest", it is indeed raw, dangerous and slippery. There is a particularly dangerous section in Crouse Run Valley, which runs from Route 8 into Pine Creek Valley. For about 100 feet of linear distance, there is a one-foot wide section to traverse, laden with roots, with steep slopes on either side, the focus being a STRAIGHT DOWN 40+ foot drop into Crouse Run. In short, one false step and you're DEAD. Good thing is, there's nothing that says you can't use roads to bypass sections of the trail. For safety reasons I might be doing so on race day. And there'd be a bonus of cutting out four creek crossings in that valley, where you're literally IN the creek.
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