REPORT: Self-supported Mt. Adams to Mt. Hood FKT

Christof Teuscher

Short and sweet

I climbed Mt. Adams and Mt. Hood and covered the many miles between them self-supported in 82:15:10. I started the day with a root canal, then had a bunch of work meetings, then drove directly to Mt. Adams, where I started dead tired into the first night. I do not recommend this. Three weeks earlier the same route had sent Megan and me home from Lolo Pass in terrible weather conditions. Sadly, Megan was unable to participate this time

A bit of backstory

Adams to Hood only comes into shape in rare years. You need the PCT corridor melted out enough to run, and Mt. Hood still holding enough snow to summit safely. That window opens maybe once a decade, which is convenient, because once a decade is about how often this seems like a good idea. 2026 lined up much like 2015 did, so here we were again.

I set the supported FKT on this route back in 2015: 2 days 16 hours 48 minutes. Self-supported is a different animal. No crew, no handoffs, nobody to hand you a gel and tell you you’re doing great. Just me, and whatever I’d buried under a bush three weeks earlier and hoped a bear hadn’t found.

Megan and I took the first crack at it on May 23 and got 142 miles in before Lolo Pass ended us. We arrived soaked, cold, and out of dry layers, built a fire, and napped under a picnic table like a pair of damp raccoons, waiting on a forecast clearing that never had any intention of showing up. Timberline was already collecting fresh snow. Summiting Hood in that would have been a great way to make the news for the wrong reasons, so we bailed and took a ride out at 2am.

Roughing it on Lolo Pass during our first attempt in 2026.

Into the dark: Adams

Wednesday morning, the day of, I had a root canal. Actual surgery, actual drill, actual dentist telling me to take it easy. From the chair I went to a few work meetings, because nothing says peak athletic preparation like a morning of endodontics followed by spreadsheets. Then I drove to the mountain. So I did not arrive at the trailhead rested, carbo-loaded, and glowing. I arrived numb on one side and already running on fumes, which is a bold way to begin 82 hours of moving.

At the start: Cold Springs trailhead by Mt. Adams.

I started at 7:48 in the evening anyway, walking uphill into dusk. Climbing a 12,000-foot volcano as the opening move of a multi-day push, at night, on a day that started with oral surgery, sounds backwards. It mostly is. But it banks the single hardest climb while the legs are at least theoretically fresh and the snow is firm enough to hold. I topped out at 12:14am, a little over four hours up, ninety minutes faster than I’d budgeted. Strong start, all things an teeth considered.

Into the night on Mt. Adams.

Summit!

My photos from up there are mostly black. A headlamp, a cone of light on frozen snow, the valley lights scattered far below, snowshoes biting in. This was the quiet, lonely heart of the whole thing: a glaciated peak in the dead of night, the world shrunk to the little circle of light in front of me and the dull throb of a freshly drilled molar to keep me company. Romantic, in its way.

The long green miles

Off the mountain, back past the trailhead, and the trip changes species entirely. The PCT through here is real runnable forest, and Thursday was the big day on the feet: the kind of miles that sounds fine right up until your feet read it back to you. The camera came back to life. Beargrass standing around in the understory like it owned the place, avalanche lilies crowding the trail where the snow had only just quit, light coming in sideways through the trunks all afternoon. After a night on snow and rock with a sore jaw, the forest felt almost tropical, and I felt almost human. Almost.

The morning was bitter cold. There was frost on the ground.

A lake, doing lake thing in Indian Heaven.

Bear grass on endless green miles.

Avalanche lilies. The snow had only just let go of this ground.

Ughs, Mt. Hood looks kinda far away!

Down to the river

Friday the trail trends down, trading the high country for the Columbia. The reward is a sunset from an open ridge with volcanoes stacked in the haze. The catch, and there is always a catch, is that every foot you give away here you have to buy back later at full price, with interest. The low point of the whole route is the river itself, 135 feet above sea level, reached late Friday night at the Bridge of the Gods. Cross that bridge and you’re at the literal and psychological halfway: Washington done, Oregon and Hood ahead, the biggest climb of the trip still sitting on the tab.

Moving barely…

Bridge of the Gods. 135 feet up, the low point of the whole trip.

Caches and calories

This is where self-supported earns its name. My food was waiting at points along the line, dropped before the start: the trailhead, a horse camp deep in the woods, Cascade Locks, and a last stash in a parked car at Timberline. A cache is a bucket of calories tucked under the brush, which is to say it is a small test of whether you can find your own snacks in the dark. A bagel and a slab of cheese on a downed log is a Michelin-starred tasting menu when it’s the first real food in hours. Chewing, admittedly, was more of a committee decision than usual, on account of the molar. The cheese and I came to an understanding.

Cache cuisine: a bagel, slabs of cheese, and mayo. Earned.!

Not sure about that.

The second volcano: Hood

Saturday was the hardest day by the only number that matters on a climb: close to 12,000 feet of gain, nearly all of it in the long haul from the Gorge back up to treeline and onto Hood. This is the invoice for Friday’s lovely downhill, now due in full. The trail hands you the mountain in stages, first a white tooth framed in green (a tooth, of all things, the mountain mocking me directly), then closer, then snow underfoot. I reached Timberline Saturday evening, deeply ready to be done, and instead pushed for the summit out into the dark one more time, because the mountain doesn’t care about your feelings. I stood on top of Hood at 3:18 Sunday morning, my second night summit of the trip, valley lights spread out below and the first color of dawn coming up behind the peak. I may have said something out loud. Nobody was there to confirm it.

Looking backwards: Mt. St. Helens, Mt. Rainier, Mt. Adams (left to right).

Heading out from Lolo Pass.

Hood, framed and still a long way up.

Ughs, I need to get up there still…

Grinding up to Timberline.

A mouse on the Hogsback!

The Old Chute was fairly challenging.

Summit! Mt. Adams was nowhere to be seen.

Hordes of climbers ascending while I was descending.

The final push on Hood at dawn, clouds filling the valleys

I finished back at Timberline at 6:03 Sunday morning. Eighty-two hours and fifteen minutes after walking into Wednesday’s dusk: two volcanoes, a state line, a river gorge, a ton of miles miles, all of it carried between caches under my own power. Tired, intact, and one root canal richer than most people who attempt this. Worth it. Ask me again next decade.

The “cloud” in the background is blowing sand.

Lots a dirt an no more snow.

Can I just be done now?

Everything eventually ends!

Plan vs. Reality

The pace plan, built on a 28 min/mi blended pace measured during the May attempt, called for a 76-hour finish landing just after midnight Sunday. I finished in 82h 15m, about six hours over. The interesting part is where that gap opened, and where it didn’t. Adams put me ahead. The forest miles held the lead, loosely. Then the second half quietly clawed it all back and then some: roughly 3.5 hours down by the Columbia, nearly 7 down on top of Hood. The plan and I stopped being on speaking terms somewhere around mile 90.

Here’s the funny part: this was not a leg-speed problem. My moving pace over the whole route was 18.9 min/mi, comfortably faster than the 28 I’d penciled in. The legs were fine. The clock went to standing still. A multi-hour refueling and sleep stop at Cascade Locks late Friday and another at Timberline on Saturday before the Hood climb, plus two summit pushes and a parade of shorter cache stops. The plan budgeted for some stopping. It did not budget for two long sleeps by a man who’d opened the week with oral surgery. On a three-and-a-half-day effort, that’s the honest trade: the rest my body demanded is almost exactly the six hours the plan didn’t have. My body, it turns out, drives a hard bargain.

2026 me vs. 2015 me

The only prior completion of this route is my own supported run in 2015 at 2d 16h 48m. The 2026 self-supported finish of 82h 15m is about 17.5 hours slower, a little over a quarter off. That gap is no mystery.

Three things explain most of it, and I’ll throw in a fourth for free. Support: Ursina fed me on the move; in 2026 I carried everything and lost time playing hide-and-seek with my own snacks. Age: I ran the rematch eleven years older, and eleven years is eleven years, no matter how much you’d like to file an appeal. Conditions: different trail, snow, and weather, which speed the route up or slow it down regardless of my opinion on the matter. And the bonus handicap: I started the whole thing fresh off a root canal and a workday, already tired before the first step.

Some boring data