FIELD REPORT | Traversing The Pinchot For a Cause
This summer, Mettle Rider Sean Corey attempted the Fastest Known Time (FKT) for the Boundary Trail in Washington’s Gifford Pinchot National Forrest. And with our long-time partnership, all good efforts come with a contribution to Leave It On The Road’s cause for Cancer Research. Sean prepped for the quest and recorded his thoughts for us to experience from afar. Below are his words and photos from an epic day on the trail.
“If anyone tells you they’ve cleaned every bit of Boundary Trail they’re full of s#@$!”
That was the quote that stuck in my head reading a 2006 report of the trail by Jim Lemonds, better known as Jeep, a legendary trail builder and advocate in the Gifford Pinchot area. He rode Boundary that year on a 2 day mission with a group friends.
Boundary Trail is a point to point adventure beginning in Council Lake and heating west to Coldwater Lake; basically Adams to St Helens crossing the Gifford Pinchot. 52 miles and just over 11k feet of climbing on steep moto rutted singletrack. Like seriousy hip deep ruts just wide enough for your cranks to clear. Not one bit of road or double track. To put it bluntly, the Boundary Trail doesn’t care about you or your fancy bike parts. It will eat whatever you have alive and smile while doing it.
In 2015 I was looking for a new challenge with a friend. We’d grown tired of all the XC races we’d done over and over and wanted more adventure but a physically demanding challenge. That’s when I stumbled on Jeep’s account in 2006. Well, that year we did it, using the whole weekend to barely eek it out. Fully loaded bike pack style on 26” hardtails with V brakes, which is a blog post in itself. The following year I was wiser and did it in 2 days as well with two other friends with a resupply by my dad at Elk Pass. Carrying only what we needed for a day ride in the backcountry. That’s when the gears started turning. What if I could do it in a day?
Fast forward 5 years. A dream that took the backburner for so long suddenly became too appealing to pass up when a worldwide pandemic hit. No racing, no other distractions. So I put my head down and trained all winter. I always knew doing this felt a bit self-serving and when I joined Mettle Cycling I was presented the opportunity to do well by this effort. Leave It On The Road is a great organization helping to fund cancer research and since this disease has affected my family deeply, I knew it was the perfect way to give back. So, I trained. I scouted the route. I asked you all for donations and now there was no turning back. We raised just over $1000 for Leave It On The Road and it gave me all the motivation I needed.
Saturday August 7th I woke up at Council lake in a tent to the smell of fresh rain from the prior day. Our first rain in months. A rush of bittersweet emotions came. No smoke but wet trails. Great for traction, not so much for staying dry with the trailside vegetation. I left at 730am with a send off from my Teammate Ben Guernsey who graciously dropped me off and the plan was to have my dad waiting for me on the other side, 52 miles and hopefully 8-9 hours later.
The first half of the ride went well, I tried to keep effort levels in check and eat while moving but this trail makes that almost impossible. There’s always something happening. Up, down, big root or loose scree moves. Fortunately (or maybe unfortunately for me), I over-hydrated which gave me a good excuse to stop to eat several times in the first 4 hours. Was it nerves? Maybe. But maybe more so I was too worried about under-hydration with only one reliable water filter stop.
At about the 3 hour mark the sky decided to let loose and I went from just my arms and legs drenched from trailside vegetation to full on soaked head to toe. Just warm enough to stay in a short sleeve but only if I kept moving. This also created the infamous boundary trail pumice slurry. With about 2 miles from Badger Lake, my water hydration stop, I kept dropping my chain and no amount of debris clearing could get it to stay on. I managed to hike/run the 1 mile climb prior to the descent into badger lake and zoomed down to the lake to refill as fast as I could. With many wet miles ahead instead of relubing I decided to use some lake water to wash my drivetrain clean. It worked! No more chain dropping! But now with the nature/food stops and filtering I was behind schedule a whole 30 minutes and growing. I had to hustle. Elk Pass to Bear Meadow is arguably the most rideable, fast section. Unfortunately this was the first sign of trail traffic. I ran into a group of 7 mountain bikers going the other direction. A rare thing to see really anyone on most of these trails, to see that many was odd! Being polite I let them through as I was on a mostly downhill trajectory. Besides, I hadn’t seen anyone in 4 hours really, nice to say hello. No biggie, not much time lost but I knew from bear meadow to Norway pass I’d need to be as fluid as possible. This is a very low use stretch often with downed trees and dense overgrowth. On this day that rang true and with the wet weather the overgrowth was unbelievably impeding. A 4 mile stretch that would otherwise be a smooth downhill took longer than some equivalent downhills. Now I was officially out of the woods, hopefully.
Norway pass to Mt Margeret, the last test of my fitness for the day. A 6 mile beast of a climb I’ve done a handful of times. It’s more rideable than the first half of boundary’s climbs but definitely the most sustained and exposed. I’ve always done it on nice days and with the best views. Usually pretty low traffic. On this day, however there was more people than I’ve ever seen on a single trail. Several groups of backpackers numbering in the 5-10s for each group. I was absolutely shocked. As trail etiquette goes, I stepped aside to let them through. At this point the rain and temperature became too much and I threw on a rain jacket. Now, I don’t want to blame my pace on hikers but if there was one thing I’d change about how I did this I would definitely choose to do this on a Tuesday. We all deserve to be out there no matter the mode, I just think I will leave this section to the hikers on weekends. The last major climb of the day should have taken 45 minutes and I spent 1 hour 15 minutes on a bitterly cold, exposed mountainside.
Clear of the last climb and atop Mt Margaret, I was free to (mostly) descend! About an hour behind schedule, I started to wonder if my dad was worried about my whereabouts. Here I am at the top of a backcountry mountain, rain and wind howling. Barely able to see much farther than the next couple single track corners with a ton of cloud cover and my dad is expecting me any minute. 11 miles to go. Now I was home free so I started to push the pace. I started to feel an overwhelming sense of accomplishment I did not expect. Tears welled up. Totally shocked at this feeling I went from full on sprints to completely frozen in thought descending off the mountain hurdling towards Coldwater Lake.
Now 2 miles left and not much brake pad left I decide now is my time to soak it in. Schralp a corner here, root gap there. I rounded the last corner to the parking lot a let out a loud yelp of excitement. Surely, my dad could hear me. What I got back was a woman and child yelp. My wife and kid! A huge surprise but where was dad? Turns out when they came to surprise me they both thought I said 3pm, when I intended for 4pm. Here it is now 5pm and my dad had just left for the ranger station, with my dry clothes! Luckily it was closed already and he came back quickly.
9 hours 37 minutes elapsed (8 hours moving time) is the official benchmark for the boundary trail FKT, shy of my 8:30 goal. I couldn’t be more proud of my effort and the accompanying fundraising efforts. A 6 year adventure has finally drawn to a close but the athlete in my wants more. I want to do it faster with better conditions. Heck, it was suggested I do it west to east and the gears are already turning! But for now I can live with the fact that I suffered for a cause and hopefully helped some people suffering a far greater pain than type 2 fun. Thank you Mettle Cycling for giving me the opportunity to represent such a rad team and fundraise for such a great organization. And a big thanks to Ben, my dad and family and anyone else who helped along the way in whatever small or big way. You know who you are!