Physical Challenges

Adventure Report: The Wonderland Trail 2019

“It’s not an adventure until something goes wrong” -Yvon Chouinard, Founder of Patagonia “You must put your head into the lion’s mouth if the performance is to be a success” -Winston Churchill, Prime Minister of the U.K. during WWII — The full moon hangs overhead. It is 4am and the temperature is dropping into the 30s. I am sitting on the concrete floor of an outhouse on the north side of Mt. Rainier as the fumes of fecal matter, previously left baking in the sun, waft through the air. My feet are pruned, blistered, and bleeding. One of my toenails has started the process of falling off. My legs ache from a day covering 48 miles and 12k ft of elevation – equivalent to taking the stairs up to and down from the top floor of the Empire State Building 12 times in a row between running two marathons. My