The full post has 21 photos, with descriptions, which can be viewed either on his personal Facebook page as a public post or as a share on Valles Caldera Rim Trail, a public Facebook page, or on the private Facebook group, Los Alamos Trails. To really appreciate Blake's accomplishment, you have to see the photos! They are stunningly beautiful, sometimes starkly so in the areas torched by the 2011 Las Conchas wildfire. The photos depict the challenging trail conditions in the burnt areas of the caldera rim. Blake's run is a bold tribute to Dorothy Hoard's long-deferred dream of a Valles Caldera Rim Trail. Thank you, Blake (and Rebecca!) for doing the run! This is inspirational for anyone who has heard of the "fabled" Valles Caldera Rim Trail. Even if we cannot run around the caldera rim in one daring day of ground truth, like Blake, an amazingly talented athlete, there are some sections of the caldera rim that many of us could enjoy right now. Blake's post and Dorothy Hoard's maps and research will inspire you to begin:
Since all my races were cancelled this spring, I needed an adventure. So Friday I ran around the entire Valles Caldera. This was 67 miles and took me 25 hours, starting from the Pajarito Mountain Ski Area and going in the clockwise direction. For those of you reading this who don't live in Northern New Mexico, the Valles Caldera is a circular volcanic caldera roughly 15 miles in diameter. The Valles Caldera National Preserve (VCNP) is administered by the National Park Service, and was acquired by the federal government from private ranching interests in 2000. The floor of the caldera is at about 8000' elevation, and much of the rim is over 10000' elevation.
I've been intrigued with running this since reading Dorothy Hoard's various 2009 proposals for a rim trail around the VCNP (http://vallescalderarimtrail.blogspot.com/). Since then, the 158,000 acre Las Conchas Fire happened in 2011, burning the rim from about the 12:30 position to the 6:30 position, and wiping out many of the trails and dirt roads that would have constituted such a route. Ironically, in her report Dorothy Hoard frequently commented that the heavy forest cover obscured views of the caldera. That isn't a problem any more! But the area is not a wasteland - in the years since much of the burned area has filled in with aspen. It does make travel difficult, however, as many of the previously runnable trails and roads are now covered with fallen trees and thorn bushes.
I started at 6 am. My wife, Rebecca, met me in five locations over the first 12 hours with food, water, and gear. I created a pacing spreadsheet for my anticipated route, assuming various paces between 1-5 mph depending on the terrain, and hit my times to meet Rebecca within a few minutes. I tried to drink 1 quart/hour of water and consume 200-300 calories/hour, which seems to be sufficient for me to run all day. I stashed water in a couple locations for the night, but the one gallon I took with me from my 8:30 pm drop lasted me to the end. I made one navigational error in the dark before the moon rose which scuppered my plan to run over Cerro de la Garita on the north rim. I think this would have added 3 hours to the alternate route I followed along the floor of the Caldera. It got cold enough during the night that the grass was crunchy with frost, but mercifully the strong winds we've been having recently were relatively mild during the dark hours on the ridges.
This is a beautiful route, even in the burned areas! Off the roads, I never saw another person. My daughter was worried that I'd be eaten by bears or mountain lions while alone during the night, but all I saw were elk, grouse, and turkeys, and I was serenaded by a nearby pack of coyotes during the night. A far greater danger was being impaled on a sharp branch while climbing under, over, or through miles of deadfall, but that was a risk under my control.
We are incredibly fortunate in Los Alamos to have this vast, beautiful, and mostly deserted wilderness just above town! Go and explore!
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| "My 67 mile route. I started at 6 am from Pajarito Mountain and ran clockwise." |
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