The Wonderland Trail circumnavigates Mt. Rainier, and is about 93 miles with 25,000' of elevation gain.

See the attachment below for a Google Earth view of the trail.

 

September 5-6, 2009:  Unsupported in 33:45

(For this unsupported run I carried all my food from the start, obtained water only from streams, and had no crew or pacers.)

An unsupported run of the Wonderland Trail has the simplest possible logistics: drive to the trail, run the loop, and drive out. I started at 3:00 am at Mowich Lake, running clockwise because the forecast called for a lowering snow line and I thought I could avoid the snow if I did the higher elevation parts of the trail first.

For the first 9 hours it rained almost continuously with temps in the 40’s. It let up for about 12 hours and even became crystal clear for a few minutes, timed perfectly for a surreal moonlit view of Mt Rainier over Reflection Lake  (a “now THAT’S why I’m here” kind of moment). The rain returned for the last 13 hours, with intermittent heavy rain squalls and temperatures dropping into the 30’s. Heading up to the exposed pass at St. Andrew’s Park at 4:00 am (hour 25) I suddenly found myself in a blizzard, and I momentarily considered turning back. But turn back to where?! That’s the other advantage of an unsupported, no crew, don’t really know anyone in whole state of Washington kind of Wonderland run:  you're not likely to quit when you’re 7 hours from the nearest road followed by a long hitch-hike back to your car. But the snow never got deep enough to obscure the trail, and I pushed on with no problem.

I stayed amazingly dry due to three pieces of critical gear:  an 8 oz. Birdiepal trekking umbrella, 4 oz. custom-made rain shorts, and a 7 oz. Marmot Mica jacket.  For food I ate Gu’s, pretzels, walnuts, and baked potato chips. At the end I had one Gu and 1 cup of walnuts left (which I couldn’t really stomach anymore), so the 3.6 lbs of food (7,200 calories) I started with was just barely enough. My total pack weight was about 12 lbs at the start, including a lot of emergency gear like a bivy sack and down jacket. It was tough to run with all that weight on my back, and I hadn’t done any serious training since running the Hardrock 100 in July. By the end I was really struggling, and realized I should have been in peak shape before attempting this thing. Duh. 

33:45 is not a fast unsupported Wonderland Trail loop by ultrarunning standards, and it wouldn’t surprise me if it’s been done quite a bit faster already. However, for the moment my run is listed as the "Fastest Known Time" for an unsupported Wonderland Trail loop at:  http://home.comcast.net/~pbakwin/fkt/wt.html

August 3-5, 2008:  Three days, supported, staying at hotels.

Splits:
Mowich to Longmire: 10:17
Longmire to White River Campground: 10:05 (but the Steven's Creek part of the trail was closed, and the road bypass saved at least an hour.)
White River Campground to Mowich: 7:57
Total: 28:19

 

The Google Earth route attached below was derived from Ben Glenn's post of the Wonderland Trail at the following site:
http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/showthreaded.php?Number=606037
I've simplified it to only show the official route of the Wonderland Trail.  Howver, Ben Glenn's route deviates from the Wonderland Trail in the vicinity of Sunrise. For my runs, I stayed on the official marked route of the Wonderland Trail, including marked detours for closed sections of trail. In 2008 the detour onto the road to bybass the Steven Creek slide was much easier than the trail.  In both 2008 and 2009, there was a detour for a short section along the Carbon River, putting the trail on the northeast side of the river when it used to be on the southwest side, with the detour possibly a bit longer. This looks like it might be a permanent detour.