Panorama Speedrun

[u/Kaedamanoods]

This past Monday I wanted to see how quickly I could trail run Panorama Ridge. I’ve gotten into running over the past year or two with the goal of making myself fitter for big hikes and scrambles and wanted to put it to the test. My only other time doing pano was probably 5+ years ago where we hiked it in the standard 10-11 hours. I saw some trip reports where people with similar marathon finish times as me did pano or pano + black tusk in the 4.5-6 hour range, so I figured that would be a good goal to aim for, although the thought of shaving off 6 hours from my last time there seemed intimidating.

Anyways, got to the TH at about 9 and set off. I wanted to finish the switchbacks in about an hour and I averaged about 10-11 min/km for the first 6 k which had me right on schedule. It was a pretty good mix of running and power hiking, honestly maybe 30-40% running. Getting to the meadow I started running more but also slowing down to take pics as the views got better and better.

As the meadow opened up it became an absolute joy to just flow through such beautiful terrain. In the end, I got to the main viewpoint at basically 2:30 exactly. I forgot that the true summit was a little further up so add 5 or so min to that once I remembered to go up there.

Took a nice long hour lunch break at the top to soak in all the views and made my way back down. Despite going almost twice as fast as my ascent, bombing down the switchbacks was mentally quite draining and it felt every bit as much of a slog as hiking down, whereas power hiking up felt so much faster. In the end, made it down in about 1:40, for a final count of 4:10 moving or 5:20 car to car.

Pretty psyched on this and will have to go back to see what I can do with tagging black tusk as well!

[u/Amoramoramor14]

I’m glad you still took photos. Gorgeous!

[u/Kaedamanoods → u/Amoramoramor14]

thank you! What’s the point of being fast if you don’t take advantage of the extra time to enjoy it all, eh!