Ending earlier than midnight on Sunday, June 30, 2024, Kyle Curtin introduced the lads’s supported Colorado Path quickest recognized time (FKT) for the east-to-west course on the Collegiate West variation to a blazing 6 days, 15 hours, and eight minutes.
Kyle Curtin (middle) with a few of his crew after reaching Durango and setting a brand new total males’s supported quickest recognized time on the Colorado Path. All photographs courtesy of Maggie Guterl.
Beginning on Monday, June 24 at 8:15 a.m., the Durango, Colorado, path runner set out from the Waterton Canyon trailhead, the jap terminus of the 490-mile Colorado Path exterior of Denver. Properly below 7 days later, he arrived “residence” to the Junction Creek trailhead exterior of Durango. The Colorado Path positive aspects one thing round 90,000 ft of vertical and passes as excessive as 13,271 ft because it traces by way of a few of Colorado’s largest and most distant mountain ranges.
The prior report of this particular model of the FKT was set in 2019 by Joe Grant in 8 days, 20 hours, and 9 minutes.
This time additionally beats the general males’s supported Colorado Path FKT, which was set in 2020 by Michael McKnight in 7 days, 13 hours, 16 minutes, and 15 seconds. In McKnight’s effort, he traveled from west to east, and used the Collegiate East variation.
Kyle Curtin discovered lingering snow on his comparatively early season Colorado Path traverse.
In keeping with Curtin’s GPS tracker and social media, he lined the primary 100 miles in roughly 24 hours. By 2 days elapsed, he’d traveled within the neighborhood of 175 miles. He surpassed 300 miles some hours earlier than the 4-day mark. He started the ultimate 100 miles someplace round 5 days and 6 hours into the trouble, and lined the ultimate 100 miles in about 1 day and seven hours.
In complete, his tempo averages out to 74.5 miles per day, or 3 miles per hour. This contains all stopped time, together with to sleep, eat, and in any other case deal with himself.
Curtin met up together with his crew typically for the finer issues in life, together with pizza and Coke. Right here he’s at Stony Move, within the San Juan Mountains, about to start the ultimate 100 miles of his effort.
There are a variety of FKTs for the Colorado Path, relying on the course and which variation of the path the athlete takes — both the Collegiate West or Collegiate East. Whereas traversing the Collegiate Peaks space west of Buena Vista, the path splits for between 70 and 80 miles and path customers can select which choice to take. Historically, the Collegiate East model is seen as simpler for its decrease altitude, much less climbing, and shorter distance, and prior quickest occasions have been set on this variant.
Curtin mentioned on social media that selected the more difficult Collegiate West course partly as a result of he mentioned it was the path’s extra pure and consultant variant of the 2.
Again in his residence mountains for the ultimate two days, Curtin simply needed to get although the San Juans to set a brand new total males’s supported Colorado Path FKT.
The Interlaken Hearth exterior of Twin Lakes brought on a neighborhood closure of a part of each the Collegiate West and Collegiate East variants. The Colorado Path Affiliation has really useful reroutes for each bit of the path, and Curtin adopted the Collegiate West reroute. This reroute shortens the Collegiate West variant by a number of miles, however in keeping with Curtin’s social media, it was longer and tougher than the Collegiate East fireplace alternate.
On social media, Curtin mentioned he wished to set a unifying FKT for each variants by taking the more durable of the 2.
Alongside the best way, he raised over $6,000 for Huge Metropolis Mountaineers, a U.S. non-profit group in search of to get youth out into the wilderness.
Curtin was supported by an all-star crew of path runners that included Sarah Ostazewski, Devon Olson, Michael Robertson, Robyn Lesh, Tara Dower, Courtney Dauwalter, Jeff Browning, Maggie Guterl, and others.
Curtin (left) used an all-star crew of pacers, together with Jeff Browning pictured right here, to assist him on his means from Denver to Durango, Colorado.
