realmoftomar

[gilf-armand]

i cannot publicly disclose what i would be doing if i was there so don’t ask

[nicebigcuteeraser]

"Time will turn your pain into strength, your scars into art." — anish

[eatorgeteaten]

Anish Kapoor

[pcttrailsidereader]

He broke a hiking record on the PCT . . . This was the extreme physical toll

Nick Fowler set a record for the fastest self-supported thru-hike on the Pacific Crest Trail. Here he took a selfie at mile marker 300 in the Southern California desert. Nick Fowler

SF Chronicle writer Gregory Thomas continues his interest in fast hiking of the PCT as he talks to Nick Fowler, new record holder for the fastest unsupported hike of the PCT. [See also the last post about Karel Sabbe's fastest support hike of the PCT.] Unsupported means that Fowler did not have a team to meet him on the trail with food or water or shelter. Fowler would have had to send himself his resupply or travel into trail towns to purchase food. It is an amazing achievement but not without consequences . . . including significant health issues. Interestingly, Fowler walked his hike SOBO.

An Oklahoma hiker traveling alone shattered the speed record for a self-supported thru-hike of the Pacific Crest Trail. That means he trekked the 2,650-mile trail solo, without the backing of a crew to help him make camp, cook or care for his body along the arduous journey.

Starting in Washington state in July and heading south, Nick Fowler covered an average of about 51 miles per day for 52 days, 9 hours and 18 minutes. He arrived in Campo (San Diego County), near the Mexico border, on Sept. 6, having beaten the previous self-supported record by more than three days.

On Monday morning, Fowler said his body is paying the price for the effort: His toes and forefeet are still numb.

“I’m exhausted,” he told the Chronicle. “I’ve been doing nothing but eating and sleeping since I got home.”

Speed records on the Pacific Crest Trail — and for that matter the Appalachian Trail, too — have been falling the past several years as extreme endurance athletes have taken interest in one-upping each other to establish fastest known times, or FKTs, on America’s wilderness trails. Several of the players belong to the burgeoning global community of ultrarunners — niche performers who participate in 100-mile-plus foot races in the mountains — including Karel Sabbe, who last month smashed the record for a supported thru-hike of the PCT, completing the trail in 46 days.

Nick Fowler sits at the southern terminus of the Pacific Crest Trail near the U.S.-Mexico border in early September.Nick Fowler

Fowler, by contrast, is a 35-year-old entrepreneur from Tulsa who says he hadn’t hiked much at all until four years ago. “I’m a nobody,” he told the Chronicle. “I’m brand new to this.”

In 2019, Fowler and his wife lit out in a van to visit all 63 national parks across the country. Along the way, he discovered a love for the outdoors and became fixated on pushing his body to the max.

Two years ago, he set the self-supported FKT on the 1,248-mile Pacific Northwest Trail, which crosses mountain ranges in Montana, Idaho and Washington. Last year he claimed the same record on the Ozark Trail in Missouri. His high mark for a single day of hiking is 78 miles, he said.

But each trek took a toll, and Fowler came away with ligament damage in his ankles and a stress fracture in one foot. Last winter, he prepared for the PCT while on crutches, healing from a foot injury.

The past several PCT record-setters have attacked the trail from south to north, in part to avoid the worst of late-summer heat in the Southern California desert. But Fowler thought heading in the reverse direction would give him an edge: He’d start in Washington’s Cascade Range, where last winter’s snowfall was relatively low, then hit the High Sierra later in summer, when its historic snowpack would be at its thinnest and the landscape would be most easily passable.

The first half of his hike was relatively fast and smooth. He went ultralight, carrying a kit with a base weight of just 7½ pounds, and covered 55 miles per day. Every few days he’d detour into a town to buy food or pick up resupply boxes of clothes and shoes he’d mailed himself along the route.

Then he hit the High Sierra, roughly halfway through, “and it all kind of hit the fan,” Fowler said.

Exhaustion, dizzy spells, a pulled quadriceps, and “the nastiest blister I ever had in my life” chipped away at Fowler’s well-being. Then his urine turned blood red, the result of a condition called rhabdomyolysis, when muscles break down and release their contents into the blood.

The 10,000 calories per day Fowler had budgeted wasn’t enough to sustain him, so his starving body started pulling proteins and electrolytes from his damaged muscles. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention defines rhabdomyolysis, which can be triggered by intense exertion, as “a serious medical condition that can be fatal or result in permanent disability.”

“I kept going even though everyone was telling me to stop,” Fowler said.

Attempting such an extreme objective forces a person to confront physical and mental limits, said Heather “Anish” Anderson, an author and respected endurance adventurer who set the self-supported FKT in 2013. During her trek, she felt her body “really breaking down,” she said.

Near Mount Shasta, Fowler crossed paths with Sabbe, the ultrarunner working on his supported FKT, and the two snapped a selfie together. Sabbe was being paced by two crew members, one of whom Fowler saw shuttling cans of soda for Sabbe — standard procedure for supported thru-hikers but an impossibility for those going self-supported.

“I was so jealous,” Fowler said. “I would have done anything for a cold pop in certain places.”

While traversing the High Sierra, Fowler encountered a ranger who was warning hikers off the trail: A hurricane of historic proportions was bearing down on Southern California and was forecast to bring deadly conditions to the mountains there.

“I thought, ‘I’ve already gone through so much, I’m not turning back now,’ ” Fowler said.

When Hurricane Hilary reached the southern Sierra, Fowler had to spend nearly two days hunkered down in a cave in the mountains.Nick Fowler

“I came out of the Sierra thinking, ‘Thank God I don’t have to deal with water anymore,’ ” he said.

The final stretch in the desert was so hot, and Fowler was so physically depleted, that the rhabdomyolysis returned and the hiker’s hands locked up on him, making it difficult for him to buckle his backpack straps.

By the time he arrived at the trail’s southern terminus to meet his wife, Fowler had been out of food and water for hours and hadn’t seen another hiker in days. “I felt like crap,” he said. “It was a real rough finish.”

FastestKnownTime.com, the record keeper for mountain treks, is reviewing Fowler’s record claim, which includes his GPS track, photos and trail notes.

Several days after finishing, Fowler said he’s still “in a fog” mentally and physically but had no regrets.

“It’s the funnest thing I’ve ever done in my life,” he said. “It’s just fascinating what the human body is capable of.”

[hometoursandotherstuff]

[themossdweller-blog]

Second book I've read this week. Couldn't put it down. This tale of Anish trying to set a fastest known time record on the Pacific Crest Trail is enthralling to say the least. The intense hardships and obstacles she had to overcome in this journey just blew my mind. She is a true role model. Anyone looking for inspiration should pick this up. Highly recommend.

[saratrofa]

Anish Kapoor at the MCA

[userarmand]

ASSAD ZAMAN & OLIVER DENCH as Anish Sengupta & Lucian Ainsworth — Hotel Portofino ◦ “First Impressions”

[hiseverywish]

i’ve got nowhere else to put all my photos of assad in his various forms. they’re plaguing me. be free, my demons

[featheredneststudio]

Anish Kapoor at the MCA

[mirrorhouse]

Assad Zaman as Anish Sengupta HOTEL PORTOFINO | 2.02

[zegalba]

Anish Kapoor: Leviathan (2011)

[gilcamargo]

#untitled @dirty_corner #Anish Kapoor #GilCamargo #art #artwork #artistsoninstagram @guggenheim_venice (at Peggy Guggenheim Collection) https://www.instagram.com/p/Ck6kSc6K4yJ/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[losingbenni]

NISH & GIAN HOTEL PORTOFINO (2023) | 2.06 - Farewells

[icomefromthemountains]

Everyone take a look at the fucking black hole that lives in my house

[reyenii]

did you do anything in particular to prepare yourself for this role?

DENCH: i painted. i thought, wow, lucian's a painter. i want to make sure that my painting looks good […] i remember before i met him, i messaged assad to ask him if i could paint him. i think in hindsight, it's probably the most pretentious thing i've ever done for anyone because he didn't even know me. he just knew there was this random guy that you'd be working with, from whom you get this message saying that he wants to paint him. i think that must have been really weird for him, but i did paint him. it was fun.