Posted on 11/08/2023 11:41:53 AM PST by nickcarraway
FKTs are dropping like flies. But the strategy for making miles might be impacting hikers' health. Updated MICAH LING
After seven weeks of what felt like non-stop motion on the PCT, Nick Fowler began seeing things. Boulders looked like objects. Trees became people. He had endured every different kind of weather, and while the scenery was non-stop beautiful, he was spending most of his time looking at his feet, and the rocks he was tripping over.
“I don’t know if these were hallucinations, or if I just really wanted them to be there, but multiple times when I had only slept for three hours, I would see a boulder and think it was a cooler full of pop,” he said.
Fowler, 35, who set a new self-supported FKT on the Pacific Crest Trail this past September, knows a thing or two about sleep deprivation. When he set out, Fowler set a goal of sleeping six hours a night—hiking from 4 a.m. to 10 p.m. But as he learned on his attempt, good intentions don’t always pay off when you’re trying to go fast. That’s when the rocks turn to pizza boxes and coolers full of beverages.
It’s also when things can get dangerous. Near the end of his hike, Fowler began falling constantly.
“I was tripping over everything. I would trip on a rock and fall and hurt my knee and then would just be bawling. Not because of the pain, but I was just sick of tripping and falling,” he said.
Fowler’s reflexes were fading. According to neuroscientist Scott H. Frey, this is a sign of serious damage to the nervous system—and can be especially risky when navigating technical terrain in the backcountry.
As fastpacking and ultrarunning grow in popularity, records on popular long trails around the U.S. seem to be dropping all the time. In the past, FKTs have stood for decades, but in recent years, they may stand for only months at a time. Betsy Kalmeyer’s supported Colorado Trail record stood for almost 20 years before Tara Dower broke it by nearly 13 hours this past summer. Then, Nina Bridges broke Dower’s record less than a month later by nearly 8 hours.
Are hikers getting faster? Maybe, but the true explanation for this advancement seems to be in sleep—or lack thereof. FKT seekers push themselves to incredible daily mileage, and then collapse in the dirt, sometimes for an hour and sometimes for mere minutes, to try and get a brain reset. Hiking on fewer and fewer hours of sleep is allowing athletes to push boundaries on the trail, but what does this do to a person’s brain and body?
A hiker in a sleeping bag lies on the ground, with mountains in the background. A hiker catches some Zs in the alpine. (Photo: Cavan Images/Cavan via Getty Images)
Frey says that scientists know very little about the long-term effects of sleep deprivation paired with 18 or more hours of strenuous activity.
“The military has always had programs on human performance and sleep deprivation—how people operate when they’re under stress and can’t sleep,” he said. But he suspects none of those studies included anything close to what thru-hikers attempting FKTs voluntarily put themselves through.
A “normal” sleep pattern for an adult human involves several 90-minute REM cycles, each of which includes all the stages of sleep. Completing multiple cycles allows a person to rest and recover by releasing growth hormones and rebuilding damage to tissues and cells. Through this process, Frey says, we’re also able to learn.
“We consolidate a lot of the new information that we’ve learned during the day and form memories,” he said. “They’re very unstable until they get stabilized or consolidated when we sleep.”
While FKT hikers aren’t in a classroom learning lots of new information every day, they do experience unique situations that require problem solving. In addition to impairing memory, sleep deprivation compromises cognitive functions like attention and perception.
It doesn’t take much sleep deprivation to throw the body and brain out of whack.
“Even just messing with sleep cycles for work can be harmful,” Frey said. Studies show that healthcare professionals who work swing shifts experience compromised health. Could sleep deprivation on a long distance hike have the same consequences?
Many thru-hikers and FKT seekers plan their efforts with sleep cycles in mind, often aiming to get 3 or 4.5 hours of sleep (a few REM cycles) nightly. In other words, FKT-seekers aren’t uneducated about the need for rest—they’re just chasing goals that require them to push their rest schedule to the absolute limit.
The same is true for Nina Bridges, 23, who completed the PCT yo-yo last year—she hiked south to north and then back—becoming the seventh documented person to complete the feat, and the second woman. Bridges unofficially (she didn’t document the journey with a GPS device) holds the record for women in 190 days and 6 hours.
This year, Bridges completed the 486-mile Colorado Trail in 8 days, 14 hours, and 15 minutes, just 47 minutes off of the men’s record. Past experiences taught her that sleep, much like nutrition, requires a plan. For her, that plan included acclimating to the elevation she’d be sleeping at on the trail.
When she’s not setting FKTs, Bridges works for Outward Bound in Leadville, Colorado as a backpacking and climbing instructor. She credits living, working, and sleeping above 10,000 feet for her ability to get solid rest on the CT.
At the suggestion of friend and fellow FKT-chaser Josh Perry, Bridges set a goal of sleeping according to complete REM cycles. For her, this meant shooting for 4.5 hours each night.
On supported efforts, many hikers have the luxury of assigning other people alarm duty. Bridges handed her phone and watch over to someone on her crew each night, so that if she woke during her sleep period she wouldn’t know what time it was and could avoid stressing about how much time she had left to sleep.
A runner makes the most of the dawn hours to push mileage. Many FKT hikers also describe doing “evening duties” in their last mile or so, in order to get to sleep as quickly as possible when they stop. They do things like eat a good dose of protein and take vitamins to help muscles recover before they ever stop walking. They also brush their teeth on the move, and slow the pace to bring their heart rate down.
“The idea was, any time I’m not moving I should be sleeping,” Bridges said. “As soon as we stopped walking I would be asleep 10 minutes later. And then I’d wake up in the morning and be walking in eight minutes.”
A common side-effect of sleep deprivation during endurance efforts is hallucination. Some people have full-blown animated-movie-like visions, and others just sense things moving around them. It’s almost impossible, because of how our vision and perception work, to not experience some version of hallucination with so much motion.
Frey says very long periods of movement aren’t natural for humans. “Eighteen hours a day of moving—we’re not set up to be getting that much motion stimulation,” he said. “The next time you’re at a waterfall, stare at it for a while. Just watch the water falling for a whole minute. And then look off to the side where nothing is moving. It will look like the ground or trees are moving up.”
Constant motion fatigues certain receptors in the brain, causing a sensory overload that can throw vision and perception out of whack. Bridges experienced this on her CT hike. “I often had trouble focusing my eyes,” she said. “I noticed it when I was using any pit toilet. I would stare at the wall and the wall would start moving. Kind of like pulsing.”
A man in shorts and a t-shirt lies on the ground in front of a mountain view. “Dirt naps” are popular with fastpackers, who catch a rest whenever and wherever they can. (Photo: swissmediavision/E+ via Getty Images) Even when hikers return to a regular schedule off the trail, the effects of sleep deprivation can be long-lasting. Those attempting long FKTs with strict schedules often report experiencing nightmares and night sweats after they finish their hikes.
Kim Levinsky, 35, an ultrarunner who holds the supported FKT on New York’s Long Path, had extensive sleep issues even after she was off the trail.
“After the Long Path, it was a full three weeks of having crazy nightmares,” Levinsky said. “A lot of times in the dreams I’d be trying to get off the trail, like ‘where is the crew car?’ And I’d wake up and either be sweating or have an elevated heart rate.”
After completing his PCT record, Fowler woke up in a sweat for weeks, and experienced a persistent general confusion. “I can’t even describe how exhausted I was. Just this mental fog that melted into my body.”
Despite the serious physical and mental toll, more and more athletes are hiking further and sleeping less. And for many, it’s worth the consequences. John Kelly, 38, who set the supported FKT on Vermont’s 249-mile Long Trail in July, is drawn to the unique challenges of these ultra-endurance feats.
“It’s a way of putting ourselves in this state where we’re forced to deal with our basic needs,” he said. “It really pushes us to a point that we don’t otherwise experience in the relatively cushy modern life that most of us have. It teaches us about ourselves. It teaches us how we respond in those situations, how we can do better, what our strengths are, and what our weaknesses are.”
Kelly’s thought is that long-distance hiking challenges are relatively safe—especially when done with the help of others, or in the context of an event.“If I fail, that usually means I fell asleep. That’s fine. I’m not getting chased by a lion. I’m not in a warzone,” he said.
Frey, on the other hand, isn’t so sure. While thru-hikes and ultra races seem like controlled environments, Frey argues that deeming them “safe” might be a bit of a stretch. There’s still not enough research to say how much sleep deprivation a person can go through before lasting damage takes place.
“Right now, I think there are still just a lot of unknowns,” he said.
Bears and cougars does the trick for me.
There was a time when I was equipping and preparing for a solo PCT hike but I never got it all together.
Preparing and financing a 6-month hike, with planned drops by friends you can depend on and then being able to get an apartment and support yourself until you can find work and get some paychecks coming in after you finish, is a tough thing to get together.
What is an FKT?
I’ve been fascinated by people who achieve the Triple Crown of Long Distance Hiking, the AT, CDT and PCT, as I’ve gotten into the sport, I’ve seen a couple of documentaries of people who have completed the calendar year triple crown which is 7500 miles plus in one calendar year, that is incredible.
I read recently the PCT record time was held by a woman in just a little over 60 days, then I found out a man named Karel Sabbe broke the record in 2016 in a little over 52 days, that record lasted for about 5 years until it was shattered by Timothy Olsen in a time of a little over 51 days, Karel Sabbe came back in 2023 and shattered all the records on the PCT in a little over 46 days or about 58.1 miles per day which is simply inhuman.
Unless you are independently wealthy, that doesn’t sound too good to me.
Our daughter and her boyfriend (now husband) hiked the John Muir Trail a few years ago in 17 days, plus a few hours, several years ago. They have seen vistas that most of us will never see in our lifetimes. There are some phenomenal photos that they captured.
I’m glad that was the extent of the hiking they’ve done. It was enough for me as a mom to handle not hearing from them often, maybe three times total those 17 days.
Even though they prepared for several months, and were well-prepared after all was said and done, it was a difficult time for them. They met people who weren’t as prepared, and shared some of their provisions with some of them. I’m glad they finished it so quickly, and are able to look back on it with many stories to share.
Fastest Known Time
Fastest Known Time. These hikers are not in it for enjoying the outdoors or the beauty of nature. They just want to be fastest. Kind of the polar opposite of what these trails offer for most people.
I think it means fastest known time. Don’t know for sure, though.
I agree. What a waste. You should be enjoying the beautiful places you’re hiking through.
I never did well with sleep deprivation.
Cannot believe spec-ops guys and what they do without sleeping much.
I’ve done 10 and 11-day solo hikes with little preparation and I know that 17 days of outdoor hiking is a wonderful experience.
I suggest that everyone at least go car camping because 3 days outdoors is a true little mini-vacation that is surprising in how that little amount of time can refresh a person.
There was a time in my life when I would get off work and head to the mountain just to spend the evening and the night and then get back in time for a shower and get to work, it was a great stress reliever.
Frey says that scientists know very little about the long-term effects of sleep deprivation paired with 18 or more hours of strenuous activity.
= = =
I suggest that they look at old data, not from Google.
I’ll bet the military has studied the heck out of this!
Read some WWII after-action reports.
I think that the times to climb Mt. Whitney and back are not recorded any more.
Because it causes problems. — People try too hard and get hurt.
Our daughter and her hubby live in Bend, Oregon now where they have access to all sorts of hiking and back-roading within an hour from their home. Every time we visit they take us to new places to hike, or go even for dinner from their souped up Land Rover. Cook the dinner, then pull out a mini picnic table, and eat dinner with the stars and hearing the water lap on the side of a lake. Then drive 50 minutes back to their home and sleep in comfy beds. Very refreshing!
For the record, my family tent camped across the country for 2-3 weeks every summer when I was a kid. By the time I was 10, I had been to every state except Hawaii, and only because we couldn’t drive there. From Florida to Alaska, lots of Canada, and through some of Mexico, those those were quick day trips. We never spent the night in Mexico.
It was a different kind of education that you can’t learn from books, and one I am grateful for.
I was the Trail Angel for my daughter and granddaughter who did the 710 mile New Mexico portion of the Continental Divide Trail in the spring of 2021. What an amazing feat with some really tough legs with blazing hot desert in the South and 10 feet of snow drifts with miles of tree blow downs in the North on trails that were horribly marked. (Where the heck are we?)
I can imagine how the almost impossible difficulties in completing any of these trails. Beside the never-ending hiking there is the logistic nightmare just staying in supplies.
The outdoors reminds us of our uniqueness, our individualism, when we are alone it helps us get in touch with ourselves, shared with friends and family it helps us bond with each other, camping is one of the smartest things parents can do with their kids, for long-term memories and shared experiences.
The hikes and the outdoor meals must be great ice-breakers when you haven’t seen each other for a while.
That sounds fun, yet intense.
It’s very bad manners to use an initialism like FKT without defining it. It might be in-speak among hikers but I still don’t know what it means.
Bears can be scary, but I knew a couple of cougars who were an awful lot of fun back in the day.
L
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