Girls Gone Wildwood

Editor's note: This race recap was a year in the making. Ann and I ran Tarawera Ultramarathon (TUM) on March 15, 2014, and it has taken me a full year to chronicle all that happened during what was our longest run ever, the farthest from home, in the most dangerous weather conditions. It's long,  full of photos, and hopefully entertaining. ************************************************ With Ann’s sabbatical about a year away, we hatched a wild plan: we would run a trail ultra-marathon together in another country during her time off. Somehow, New Zealand became the obvious choice. There are tons of trails, long distance events, gorgeous landscapes and multi-day hikes for Ann’s vacation. We set about researching races, and quickly settled on the Tarawera Ultra Marathon because it’s one of the larger events, had a distance that was longer than we had raced but not too big of a leap, and appeared to be extremely well-organized. A Maori carving near the entrance of Te ...

As our love of trail running grows, so has our interest in its people, history and events. Which is why Ann & I now anticipate and eagerly follow the Western States 100-- the world's oldest and most famous one hundred mile race. We are, however, under no delusions that we will ever run it. Not only is that distance too far, it's a lottery to get in and the odds are not good. After all we've seen, heard and read about the race, though, we thought it would be fun to run on part of the course. Which is why, when I read an article about the legendary Ann Trason's return to running and her inaugural 100k/50mi/50k event on the Western States Trail, I knew we had to run it. We registered for the 50 mile race, nervous about the 13,000 ft of elevation gain but happy to see that it was all under 3,000ft altitude-- high altitude is part of what made our Three Sisters run difficult. Some of the complications of preparing for a race we had to travel to were alleviated by th...

North Sister at sunrise 11 years ago my first multi-day backpacking trip was the 50+ mile loop around the  Three Sisters  in Central Oregon. Since then I have done multi-day hikes all over the world and in the Pacific Northwest, but the Three Sisters trip still remains one of my favorites and most beautiful. I have been back to the Three Sisters Wilderness several times in the last 11 years for overnight trips and even to climb  South Sister , but never to do the full loop. Once Susan and I started talking about doing the loop around Mt. Hood, I knew if we completed that we could do the Three Sisters.  Ann backing the 3 Sisters Loop 11 years ago Mt. Hood is shorter distance wise (~40 miles), but it has almost double the elevation (10,000 feet), and it has the  Eliot Creek washout . We almost completed the full  Mt Hood loop in 2013  and we would of completed it if it wasn't for getting lost and running out of day light. Even though ...