High Country News:
Heather Anderson, 32, arrived in the dark around midnight on Aug. 7, exhausted and alone.
… she set two even more impressive records, becoming the fastest woman to hike the PCT (in 60 days), and the fastest self-supported hiker – male or female – breaking a 2011 record by nearly four days. …
HCN: What motivated you to try to set a speed record?
HA: I first thru-hiked the PCT in 2005, and it’s one of those funny things you think about while you’re out there. I saw people attempting speed records and wondered how fast I’d be. I like the idea of seeing how far I can push my body. (I had) a lot of fears and weaknesses that I wanted to address, and there had never been a woman that had done a self-supported attempt of this length. …
HCN: How many miles a day were you hiking?
HA: Between 40 and 50 miles every day. I hiked a lot in the dark. That was one of the challenges that I knew I wanted to overcome. I was scared of mountain lions, and I’ve always been terrified of being out at night. In the past, if it was starting to get dark and I hadn’t found a place to camp, I’d literally be running down the trail almost crying. So on this trip I made myself hike three or four hours each night. I saw four mountain lions. …
besthike.com 