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Northville-Placid Trail Run

by Tim Seaver

4:39 am: Somewhere out on West Lake, a loon’s wild scream pierces the silence, jolting me awake from my sleepy jog in the wilderness. Sixteen hours into this run, with over 50 miles to the finish, a creeping fatigue begins to whittle away at my optimism. Threading through yet another blow down, I keep hoping that my speed will return with the daylight.

It’s my second attempt to set a new speed record on the Northville-Placid Trail. The trail was cut in 1922 as the first project of the fledgling Adirondack Mountain Club. The trail winds for 122 miles through what remains some of the Adirondack’s wildest and most remote lowlands, traversing pristine lakes and streams for much of its length, and featuring terrain that includes everything from smooth single track to tangled blow downs and beaver dams.

After competing in the Damn Wakely Dam Ultra in 2004, a trail run that uses a 32-mile section of the Northville-Placid Trail, I couldn’t help but wonder if the entire trail had seen any speed attempts. The only mention I had found was in the ADK’s Northville-Placid Trail guidebook; the “unbelievable” 40 hours and 20 minutes time of Richard Denker of Galway, who completed the trail as a run in 1973 with the sponsorship of the Boy Scouts.

I thought it was incredible that one of the few long distance footpaths in the Northeast would lie “dormant” for so long, particularly one which is so well suited to running. So it came to be my primary distance running goal for this summer: to dust off this vintage wilderness run and give it a shot.

I began scouting the trail as soon as dry conditions set in; running each section, making notes, then biking back to my car. During the actual event, my wife Elisabeth and running partner/ace journalist Jamie Biggam of Montpelier, Vermont, were to be my support team, who would re-supply me at each of the five road crossings with the basics — food, water, a new pack, and a generous slathering of Vaseline on my feet to ward off blisters.

After abandoning a July attempt due to thunderstorms, we returned on August 6th to perfect weather: 70s and low humidity. Starting at the Chubb River Bridge at 9 am, a deliberate “late start” that would hopefully put me on smooth terrain and roads for as much of the night as possible if we held to our projected pace. The first 36 miles from Lake Placid to Long Lake was fantastic, with some of the nicest running sections of the trail, and the cool temperatures kept the voracious deer flies at a minimum. I arrived at the first support point 47 minutes early, had a quick parking lot shower, some food and a change of shoes, and was off again.

The next 16-mile leg features the one true climb of the entire trail — a steep ascent over a 3000-foot saddle. A highlight was coming to a clearing where thousands of closed gentians were glowing a brilliant translucent blue in the evening light. Passing the south end of Tirrell Pond as darkness fell, I sparked up a headlight for the remaining four miles to the support stop at Lake Durant.

After a brief stop for shoes and some food, I headed into the woods for the six miles to the Cedar River Road. I felt I could keep churning out the same four miles per hour pace without pushing it, although I was now taking my two-minute rest stops more regularly. I arrived at the road over an hour ahead of our schedule, then ran alongside the van and chatted with Jamie along the next eight miles to where the trail enters the woods again. Somewhere along this very hilly stretch of road, my running ability began to fade. As I entered the woods above the Wakely Dam at about 1 am, my legs seemingly turning to stone, I realized that I might be lucky to simply finish.

The 32 miles to Piseco is probably the “wildest” section of the Northville-Placid Trail; traveling through the deepest reaches of this area at the crack of dawn was a magical experience, and the deep fatigue I was feeling made it even more surreal. Emerging at the Cold Stream Bridge two hours behind my target pace, I met Liz and collapsed in a chair to wolf down some food and close my eyes for a few precious minutes. Fifteen minutes later, I was lurching along the three-mile road leg to NY Route 8 under an unbearably hot sun, my toasted legs protesting every step as I crossed the 100-mile mark.

Fifty minutes later I was in the woods again, en route to the last support at Whitehouse, six miles away. Even three miles per hour was becoming difficult, and I was taking brief rests on the ascents. Jamie backtracked from Whitehouse on the trail to check on my progress, and then joined me for the final 16-mile leg. At this point, my legs were absolutely smoked, and I was cranky as hell. I was also unaware of just how slow we were going, at least until we came to the lean-to at Silver Lake where a couple was staying. We greeted them, just as darkness fell, and casually asked if they knew how far it was to Upper Benson.

“Seven and a half miles,” the woman offered in a tone that suggested: you’ll never get out of here alive.

It was like a triple shot of adrenaline. Between her tone and the realization that we were still a good ways from the finish, my legs suddenly came to life. The pain that had racked my calves disappeared. Tossing the branch that I had been using as a hiking staff into the woods, I started running, albeit slowly, for the first time in hours. We managed to hold this pace all the way to the bridge at West Stony Creek, where I could finally smell the finish line. Grunting and groaning through the last mile, we finished at Upper Benson at 10:31 pm, for a total time of 37 hours and 31 minutes.

Tim Seaver is a photographer living in Calais, Vermont. He enjoys the pursuit of unique wilderness imagery and working with environmental and outdoor publications. For more information, visit his Web site at vermontphoto.com.

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