Northville - Lake Placid Trail, New York
Tim Seaver ran the 122-mile Northville - Lake Placid Trail in 37h31m, Aug. 6-7, 2005.
According to Wikipedia: "The
Northville-Lake Placid Trail,
also known as the NPT, is a lightly-travelled foot trail that runs
133 mi (214 km) through the Adirondack Park in northern New York State. It was laid out by the
Adirondack Mountain Club in 1922 and 1923, and is now maintained by the New York State Department
of Environmental Conservation."
Gorp has a detailed
mile-by-mile decription of the trail.
Though the NPT is officially 133 miles, for 10+ miles from Northville to Benson it follows
paved roads, and the last 1.2 miles or so into Lake Placid are also on paved roads.
Most hikers consider the "practical" end points of the NPT avoid these beginning and
ending road sections, so that the trail route is about 122 miles. So far, speed runs of
the NPT have also skipped these beginning and ending road sections.
Prior to Tim Seaver's 2005 run, Richard Denker held the FKT for the NPT at 40h20m, set in
August 16-17, 1973, when Denker was just 18 years old. He was supported by a large group
from the Boy Scouts of America.
Vermonter Tim Seaver broke Denker's record on August 6-7, 2005, running 122 miles in 37h31m,
supported by his wife and a friend, and using about 44 self-cached 1/2 liter water bottles.
His splits are here.
Seaver researched Denker's 1973 run, and was able to contact Denker.
He discusses differences between the route of the trail in 2005 and 1973 on the
Adirondack Hiking Forum.
It appears that Seaver's run was about 2 miles longer than Denker's. Seaver also
worked up a detailed pace comparison
between the two trips, and posted Denker's Record of Trip.
There have been a couple fairly fast unsupported trips on the NPT. Drew Haas did the full
133 (135?) miles from Northville to the Averyville Road train station in 2d12h30m on
Sept. 2-5, 2009, Details are on this website.
Previously the fastest known unsupported time was 3d8h by Erik Schlimmer, in October 2008.