The John Muir Trail is back in the FKT spotlight, so I dug up the story of one of the wildest things I have ever done.
In 2022, I started in Yosemite carrying everything I would need to cover 223 miles unsupported and chase the John Muir Trail record. Over the next three days, I peed brown, stopped eating enough, hallucinated a safari guide, broke both straps on my backpack, fell asleep while moving, and woke up face-down on the trail.
With the record slipping away, I took a 12-minute nap, climbed Mount Whitney through the night, and ran the final switchbacks hard enough that stopping to pee was no longer an option.
I finished in 3 days, 47 minutes, and 56 seconds—breaking the record by less than 13 minutes.
This is the full story of the highs, lows, questionable decisions, and tiny mental tricks that somehow got me to Whitney Portal in time.