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Trip Reports: The Black Mountain Ultra Traverse

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Trip Report/ Black Mountain Ultra Traverse : Unsupported Trail Race/ By: Ultra Adventures, Inc./ Date: First Weekend In October/ Where: Burnsville, North Carolina/ Trip: 10hrs15mins (CR), 1st Place Overall/ Course Overview The Black Mountain Ultra Traverse  course is a wonderful thing.  A 3am start from Albert's Lodge  ushers you along S outh Toe River Road  for 6 miles, to enter the Mount Mitchell State Park. A sharp right onto Buncombe Horse Range Trail  marks the long ascent up Mitchell. At roughly half-way to the summit, there is a water source and a momentary reprieve from climbing. A couple miles of fast running along fantastic double-track finds a hard left onto  Old Mitchell Trail followed by a quick right onto Alice Camp Trail ; the first truly steep pitch on the ascent. Only a half-mile long, Alice Camp can take a solid twenty minutes before its termination at  Mount Mitchell Summit Trail . Summiting Mitchell (the highest point east of the M...
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Trip Reports: MST Segment 10

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Nathan Toben's Trip Report/ Mountains-to-Sea-Trail: Segment 10/ Date: October 21st, 2020/ Time: 7:00am EST - 7:24:16 EST/ Supported FKT: 12:24:19/ The run started to plan. I was surprised to see ~25 people (family, friends, trail stewards, and many kids and staff from Triangle BikeWorks) braving the dark, foggy morning to stand in the Pleasant Green Trail Access parking lot and count me down. It felt like a legit race send-off as I headed down the trail at 7am sharp.  The first few miles are some of the most technical on the entire Segment 10 route. My plan was to ease down from 10-minute miles to give my proprioception time to warm up. I found myself settling in to mid-8-minute miles - probably too fast. However, movements through thin ropes of fog felt efficient, so I went with it. The first snag was - due to the weather and thick riverside canopy - the Spot Trace GPS tracker could not find a signal. I was confident that there would be more than sufficient evidence for FKT verifi...
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