Five years ago, Nick Fowler says that just walking a mile left him winded, but over the weekend, the Oklahoman set a new Fastest Known Time on the 800-mile Arizona Trail. The news comes less than two months after we reported that Tara Dower had set a new FKT on the Appalachian Trail.
The ultra runner and fastpacker announced on his Instagram account yesterday that he had completed the desert trail in 12 days, 17 hours 33 minutes, shaving some 10 hours off the previous FKT, set by Josh Perry in 2019. He has since made his route live via Garmin.com which shows he ran southbound.
Fowler's feat means he averaged 64 miles each day during which he covered 100,000 feet of elevation gain as he crossed the Grand Canyon and Saguaro National Park. If that doesn't sound particularly easy, by all accounts it wasn't. Posting on Instagram through his journey, Fowler shared the lows as well as the highs. After a false start where he says he spent the day puking his guts out in the Grand Canyon, he took two days off and started over.
Halfway through his second attempt, on day six, Fowler says he encountered heavy rains that made the desert terrain difficult to navigate.
"Roughest day yet. Chafing is out of control. Water filter clogged to zero flow. Too tired to run. Lost my hat," he wrote.
With no post the following day, he was back online two days later, and it didn't sound like much had improved.
"Well that sucked. We can blame it on the superstitions or just admit I’m getting tired. Needed a break so stopped a couple hours early."
On day nine, he reported that he had added an extra five "bonus" miles to his already epic day due to wrong turns and the next day, he says, Mount Lemmon, which tops out at 9,000 feet, slapped him sideways.
The best among us might have quit after all that, but following a few more wrong turns and bonus miles on day 11, Fowler made it to the southern terminus at Coronado National Memorial in record time.
What is a self-supported FKT?
Running the trail self-supported meant that Fowler couldn't rely on others for food and gear drops and though he could cache his own supplies along the way and rely on spontaneous kindness from strangers or stay in hotels, any help he received would need to be available to everyone else. Based on the trajectory of the trail, it's certain he had to carry his sleep system with him for the journey.
After taking up hiking in 2019 when visiting US National Parks and quickly picking up the pace, Fowler already set a self-supported FKT on the 400-mile Oregon Coast Trail in June and has previously set self-supported FKTs on the 2,653-mile Pacific Crest Trail in 2023 (in 52 days), the Ozark Trail in 2022 and the Pacific Northwest Trail in 2021.
The Arizona Trail is a National Scenic Trail established in 2009 by connecting pre-existing paths. This primitive trail is intended for use by hikers, mountain bikers, equestrians and even cross country skiers and showcases the ecological diversity of the state. The trail is divided into 43 sections, called Passages, three of which take you from the South to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon.
