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Showing posts from January, 2021

Notes on the Iceland Traverse

I just recorded an interview with The Trail Show podcast talking about traversing Iceland. In case anyone hears the show and wants more information, I thought I'd organize links. The standard North-to-South route is described by Jonathan Ley on his webpage . I can't find a GPS track of his route, so please let me know if you know of one. There is a track from FKT , and one from Katie-Jane L’Herpiniere but they both follow the F26 road across the middle of the country, which I would recommend against. My photos from the hike can be found here . Additionally, if you enjoy street art, Reykjavik's is impressive .  My report describing resupply, lessons learned, and north-south traverse route information, is here . My description of hiking around Hornstrandir in the Westfjords region is here . You can also use the calendar function for July 2014 on the right side of this page to read the short entries I posted while hiking.  Others who have traversed Iceland: Jozef Ivanecky i

Follow Some of the Rules: A Tribute to Lucas Horan

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It was confirmed a few days ago that my friend Lucas Horan drowned in the Bay late last month. I first met Lucas in May 2017, when he made a Strava comment on a run of mine. That March, I set out to get back my course record (CR) on the descent from Vollmer Peak down the Claremont ridge to the gate on Stonewall Drive. 3.41 miles with a -7.9% grade, the last 0.68 miles of which are -18.7%. I'd been bombing down the Claremont ridge for 13 years at that point, and aside from the long-since-moved-away grad school friend who'd introduced me to ultra-marathoning, I'd never met anyone who actually thought you could run down the thing, let alone hell for leather on the edge of control. I was successful in my objective, getting the CRs for the full descent and the bottom half back. Many Strava segments are (to my taste) short and uninteresting. To find a 3.41 mile section that is a natural downhill line is a rare treat. For it to be named " The Real Harvey Quadbanger " is