Petite Trotte à Léon 2018 (the mother of all PTLs)

Posted on October 29th, 2018

Words & Photos: Filippo Canetta

I don't like knowing a film's plot before going to see it, or reading a book's reviews before actually reading it. I get so few chances to be genuinely surprised that I don't want to rob myself of the discovery, good or bad, of what's waiting for me.

I do the same thing with races, I gather a bit of surface-level information, then build my own mental picture, at least to try to steer my training toward the presumed direction of the race's difficulties. It's a very subjective training method (#whateverdammit) that sometimes works, and other times leads to epic failures, especially when my mental picture drifts far from reality.

I followed this same strategy with PTL too, though, for a race that officially claims over 300 km and 26,500 m of elevation gain, how do you even prepare?

My reference points stop well short of that, 26-something hours for UTMB, 33 hours for Spartathlon, at PTL, if I'm lucky, I'm looking at 3, 4 times that. The scale involved is enormous.

Luckily, the anxiety and fear settle down a few days before the start, once whatever could be done has been done, and an unhealthy curiosity to discover what lies beyond takes over. What I love about these ultra-adventures is exactly that, discovering what I don't yet know.

Luckily, Chamonix isn't too crowded yet, the big circus hasn't opened its doors, and at the briefing run by the PTL committee (separate from UTMB), the atmosphere feels calm, almost like a small local race. With very little fanfare, we're told there'll be difficulties, chains, ridges, scree fields, but nothing to worry too much about.

I'm not especially nostalgic, but there's no getting around it, every single time, starting from Place Triangle de l'Amitié in Chamonix, given what it means for the trail running world, is always a powerful moment, even for three worn-out old trail runners like us. Yes, because this adventure is run in teams, and we're a team of three.

It's clear right from the start that we love adventure, we'd never even met before the start, and none of us had ever looked at the course maps. Other teams seem to move as if remote-guided by satellite, never even glancing at the route ahead. We, on the other hand, decide to check our devices (the race isn't marked, and you follow a GPS track), and somehow convince ourselves everyone else is wrong, heading down an alternative path before realizing our own arrogant mistake. We've still got to get the hang of our gadgets, but there'll be plenty of time for that.

My backpack, thanks to lessons learned at the Marathon des Sables, is heavy but manageable, Roberto has a huge trekking backpack I've never seen him use before, and Luca, well, Luca could easily win the award for heaviest backpack in the whole race, I think he's carrying twice the standard gear, plus some extra reserves on top. Other teams have backpacks barely bigger than what you'd bring to UTMB, and they've already scouted almost the entire course, where we get lost, or spend hours figuring out where to go, they simply pass us, walking, without hesitation, exactly where we should have gone too, leaving us stunned.

Right from the start, the race reveals itself in its purest essence: between two trails (when there even are two), the course setters always choose the more brutal one.

We often waste a lot of time trying to find the way, simply because the spot the GPS track points us toward seems completely impassable.

Before long, we realize this is the whole spirit of the adventure, and in a way, we start appreciating the twisted pleasure of constantly throwing competitors into difficult situations, we drop the idea of competing against other teams and shift instead into a kind of psychological battle with the race organization itself. Our mindset quickly becomes: "You want us to go through there? Fine, we'll go through there, and whoever holds out longest wins." Sounds silly, but this shift in perspective helps us stay alert, always ready to make decisions, because we know that around the next bend, right after an easier stretch, some new difficulty will surely be waiting.

I don't know much about races this long, and I lean on my teammates, who've already finished several (they're both legends). I'm very curious to see what'll happen once I step outside my comfort zone.

We don't sleep the first night, it's a stunning night, warm and clear, the starry sky is beautiful, and I convince myself this is the right strategy.

Dawn's about to break, and we're satisfied to have found a way through where there didn't seem to be any. Others chose to attempt the ridge route, one that, in our view, could easily have ended in an impassable stretch. Sure enough, as we're struggling up the valley along a barely-there trail, we spin around, startled by the sound of rocks tumbling off the ridge, and see Iker Karrera and Zigor Iturrieta sliding down right onto Roby's head.

As often happens, after many hours in motion with very little sleep, time takes on a liquid quality, and it becomes increasingly hard to sense its passing. The usual distinction between day and night stops applying, some moments stretch out into an eternity, while entire hours seem to fly by in seconds.

We cross passes no one's ever crossed before us, where we can't even make out the leaders' footprints, we scramble up scree so steep we have to move staggered apart, so we don't send rocks tumbling onto each other, and we descend through valleys thick with blueberry bushes so tall they reach our knees, half of which I've personally eaten.

We see so many wonderful things that our brains struggle to hold onto them all.

Running a few hours behind our "sanity-spanning" calculations, we reach the first of the two life bases, in Val Veny, relieved to have hit this milestone, we happily lose ourselves in conversation, and, with perfect timing, once we've grabbed our via ferrata kit, we head off, right as darkness falls, into the most technical section of the whole course. I opt for a pair of Spin Rs, we need to climb the old via ferrata up to Rifugio Monzino and descend the new one, and the choice proves spot-on for climbing rock.

Where we expect to find a bridge, and normally a friendly volunteer, we instead find just a pole with a balise (we'll only run into three of them over the entire course) and a raging stream. In the dark, lit only by our headlamps, it looks pretty fierce, no other teams in sight, unsure, we call the organization, who tells us there should be a rope. There's no rope. There's no other way, we ford it and make it across. In the darkness, Mont Blanc looms, its massive bulk rising in front of and above us. A little later, we find a rope strung between two rocks at another stream crossing. We thank the organization for such generosity. Roberto tries hanging from the webbing, which, being elastic, dunks his butt right into the water. We decide to just jump, and land on the other side. Finding the via ferrata's starting point in the dark, tangled among old ropes dangling off the rock face, isn't easy.

We start our climb, it feels good pulling ourselves up with arm strength, taking some weight off our already tired legs. Fear of the drop and pure adrenaline push us to climb fast across rocks, bolts and rungs, and we reach the end of the via ferrata in the dead of night. The face is so overhanging that we can look down into the valley and onto the ferrata itself and see the other teams making their way along it, lit up by our own headlamps. The full moon starts to reveal the Bruillard Glacier through the darkness, we eat something, happy to be there, halfway between the sea and Mont Blanc's summit. We set off again, but can't find the way to the mandatory waypoint, the mountain hut. We spot it on our screens, but it looks like it's beyond a vertical wall, seemingly impassable in the moonlight. I try climbing further up to look for an easier way through, Luca tries feeling out the wall directly, and Roberto studies the roadbook. All three attempts turn up nothing. The spot is stunning, but we've been here far too long, I search for signal to call the hut. Doubtful and a bit foggy from exhaustion, we follow the hut keeper's directions toward the wall that had seemed impassable, and, miraculously, find old yellow trail markers guiding us the rest of the way. The other two teams, who've clearly slept a few hours, are catching up to us. We sign the register at the hut and discover we're in fourth place, we know it means nothing this early on, but we shake ourselves awake and head straight for the descending via ferrata. We're making good progress when Luca and I, trying to see where Roberto had ended up, shine our headlamps down into the void beneath our feet, resting on a rung made of metal rebar driven into the rock. I don't know about Luca's legs, but mine started shaking, a mix of fear and exhaustion, and I started clipping in with my second lanyard too. Every piece of gear, helmet included, earned its keep. With a goofy grin, we reach Roberto, and together plant our feet back on the valley floor.

We alternate between moments of extreme clarity, sparked by tension and fear, and stretches of foggy calm. Sure enough, what should have been a simple crossing of the Miage Glacier turns into a genuine nightmare. We're not very nimble on the unstable scree, and struggle hard to get through it. I keep pushing for a break to rest, but the freezing air pouring down off the ice above Lac Combal won't let us. We reach Rifugio Elisabetta right as dawn breaks on day three, a quick breakfast, and even though sleeping isn't officially available to us competitors, they very kindly offer us a room, where we settle on a mere forty-five minute stop. Ever since I was a kid, I've always struggled to fall asleep, usually I sleep little and badly. I dread this moment. I'm scared, with so little time available, that I won't manage to sleep, but finally lifting my feet off the ground after three days instead sends me straight into a deep sleep.

When the alarm goes off, we get ready quickly, practiced by now at this kind of routine, and amid what feels like absurd chaos, caused by hikers packing up their huge backpacks, we set off again, finding peace once more. Our life's been reduced to the essentials: eat, sleep (a little), and follow the route. Our backpacks hold only what little we truly need.

By now, exhaustion and sleep deprivation have us moving almost like a single-cell organism, without even communicating, one man's needs become all three's needs.

The experience is so intense that it's hard to keep thoughts in any order. Memories and images never actually seen but somehow stored come back scattered, out of sequence, while other stretches are just a total blank.

The section leading to Rifugio Robert Blanc is beautiful, but the weather's turning, storms are forecast, so we only take a short break, meaning eat, don't sleep. We quickly flee (loosely speaking) alongside two other teams, one made up of a brother and sister. Him, I nickname Ivan Drago (the one from Rocky), because he stays completely unshaken no matter the difficulty. I try to imagine their story, what could have driven them to take on an adventure like this? They know the route incredibly well, they've already scouted every difficult section, he's a GPS wizard, she's growing progressively more exhausted, we sleep less, but whenever we lose time hunting for the way, they always catch back up to us. When the first storm hits us, in perfect unison, we pull out our secret weapon, the poncho. Quickly, without stopping, we throw it on over our backpacks, and we're protected like a snail in its shell. This ritual will repeat itself countless times from here all the way to the finish.

Here, there's no race direction making decisions for us in case of bad weather, we're the ones who have to make them, entirely on our own.

We're alone, no volunteers pointing out which handhold to grab on which rock. We pass through spots so remote that even the classic mountain cairns become a mirage, and the few we mistake for markers turn out to just be leftover debris from some rockslide, with zero navigational value. We cross valleys never walked by a human being, where trails don't exist at all. This is the very spirit of PTL.

There's no point playing the superheroes we're not, exhaustion is starting to set in, joints creak, but the thing suffering most from all the kilometers and hours is our feet. They ache mostly in spots normally barely stressed by running. The long traverses across scree fields leave us with pain along the outer edge of our heels. From here on, we'll get plenty of chances to test our own pain tolerance.

The race is so complex that we end up exploring nearly the full range of our physical and mental limits.

Trusting that a few short fifteen-minute breaks will be enough, we eat at Refuge de la Balme, and in the dead of the third night, we set off toward Pierra Menta. The fog is thick and damp, lit up by our headlamps, it pulls us into a kind of dreamlike drowsiness that makes route decisions genuinely difficult. Things get more complicated with numerous markers from other races scattered across that legendary mountain. It's raining, we're cold, we layer up, swap headlamp batteries, but still can't find the way through, and lose a lot of time. Another team catches up and joins us in the search for the pass. Shortly after, Ivan Drago and his sister arrive too (they'd slept at least an hour). The scene is more or less this: it's three in the morning, rain's coming down sideways, five of us huddled seeking shelter on the south face, shivering, layered in everything we had in our packs, gripping every piece of technology we own, and without a hint of hesitation, he passes us and drops straight down the slope none of us, or the others, had dared attempt, a fierce north wind howling on the other side, at one point Ivan stops, we half-smile, thinking he's realized his mistake, instead, he takes off his jacket, and, wearing just a t-shirt, keeps descending as if nothing were happening. Absolute legend!

After that, the terrain shifts, dirt replaces rock, we breathe a sigh of relief, but it won't last long, mud pushes the ridge we still have to cross right to the edge of what's passable.

We're past the halfway mark of the race, and up to now we hadn't run into any major problems. On this stretch, though, I'm literally falling apart. I can't stay on my feet, or rather, I keep walking, but without realizing it I collapse onto the leg not bearing weight, the instant I go down, I wake up and jab my pole down to catch myself. Two more steps, and I collapse the other way. I watch myself from outside, asleep right on the edge of the trail, nobody notices, they just leave me there. I'm way outside my comfort zone. It's a new experience, one I've never had before. I don't know how long this genuine nightmare lasted, but I know I can't just stop in the mud, in the rain, I have to reach the next refuge. I focus purely on that, even though at least twenty kilometers still remain. Luckily "Ivan," who's leading the group, stops. For once, even he doesn't seem convinced we can get through. Welcome to the club. Taking turns, we make a few attempts to find alternatives, but they all turn out impassable, off route. Another team catches up to us, using their poles like ice axes, and manages to push through. The mud's turned into a real quagmire by now, so, not wanting to risk it further, we strap on our crampons (thanks, Nortec), and what had looked impassable turns out manageable. We fall behind, and start losing visual contact with the group. To wake myself back up, I run ahead to stay in sight of the others. I can still run, and it's almost liberating, after so many hours on foot. I'm alone, halfway between the group ahead and my teammates behind, signaling directions with my headlamp. In daylight, with good weather, this ridge must be stunning, at night, in the rain, I can't wait for it to be over. I catch up to the group, but don't see my own teammates, I stop, and while waiting for them, dawn breaks on day four. It's always a magical moment, and it helps keep me awake. I try counting the hours of sleep I've had, and land on four, strangely, I can't even work out how many days have passed. In theory, we could have reached Chamonix by Friday afternoon, we'd imagined a triumphant finish an hour before UTMB's own start, crowd cheering us in. But dreams are often far removed from reality, we've still got over 100 kilometers and 10,000 m of climbing left.

At Beaufort (our second and final life base), we eat, and I, for no clear reason, even take a shower, then we sleep what's by now become our standard for long stops, dictated by Roberto: 45 minutes. Roby's standard for short stops is 15 minutes, sometimes trimmed, to my great dismay, down to 13.

In the dead of the fourth night, we set off again, refreshed, our bodies seem to have adapted, satisfied with very little now. I used to dread these restarts, but instead, plunging back into nature after being indoors for a few hours feels almost liberating. We've become like those tramps who, unable to tolerate convention, keep having to retreat back into nature.

The race is so long that the experience built up in the early days keeps paying off in the ones that follow. We climb pretty well now, our navigation technique has been tested and proven: we follow the track on Luca's Garmin, and whenever we hit a junction, or he's unsure, I open my Cartograph app and head off in a slightly different direction from wherever Luca's moving. That way, we quickly figure out the right one. We're not as fast as teams who've already scouted the route, but we manage well enough. Like the previous three nights, as we climb we first hit fog, then rain starts. Around here, the mud's claylike, and you slip even on flat ground. Instinct built up over countless races (we tried tallying how many the three of us have run combined over the last 10 years, and it's over 1,000) pushes us to start running when a team catches up, seemingly out of nowhere (or rather, out of the fog). We're steadily holding around fourth place, for whatever little that's worth, since there's no official ranking, but it still gives us something to stay focused on. At the beautiful Refuge du Petit Tétras, Luca and I get our usual 15-minute nap, while Roby stays behind chatting in the common room. We set off again quickly, squeezing every bit of efficiency out of the stop. We've realized we're running much slower than planned because of the route's difficulties, and try to make up time wherever we can. On the next climb, it's Roby who calls for a time-out, he's about to shut down completely, and we sit on one of the rare benches along the path. Before I even manage to doze off, he jolts back up, walks a bit further, then sits back down for what feels, to me, like an incredibly brief, indefinite stretch, then sets off again. He doesn't want to talk, moving alone with his own demons. We follow to avoid losing him. Watching him from behind, he looks like a disjointed puppet about to collapse any second. Then dawn breaks, and we regain a decent pace.

Near Col des Aravis, we try, unsuccessfully, to buy some food. As we push on, I feel the Achilles tendon on my previously operated foot start to inflame, something swelling up under my sock. Up until now, the aches and issues had always stayed minor, manageable, bearable, but now I know this can only get worse. About seventy kilometers remain, which, at PTL pace, translates to a day and a half. All the effort I've put in so far suddenly feels pointless, and the chance of finishing the race seems ready to vanish in an instant. The stakes are incredibly high, normally I would have stopped, but I decide not to give up. I know I'll pay the consequences. I try to find some relief, planting the pole in sync with my right leg, and restricting the tendon's movement by tightening my calf muscle. The pain is so sharp it clouds my thinking, I no longer even know if I should eat or sleep. I hand over every simple decision completely to my two teammates.

We're stuck at a dead end, I snap out of my dark thoughts when I see Roby heading one way, Luca another. I go a third way, but none of us can figure out where we're actually supposed to pass. I remember Roby saying that if we climb up, we won't be able to get back down, and if he's the one saying it, you trust it, sure enough, no one argues. We weigh every option, pros and cons, and finally agree on cutting through the gully, hoping we won't have to double back. When we finally find the way, two other teams heading down toward the valley floor spot us and immediately turn around. The passage is narrow and treacherous, but we're relieved to be out of that uncomfortable spot. We reach a point where erosion has carved out a magnificent hole in the rock, giving us a view straight into the next valley, and we finally understand why the organizers put us through so much, the view at dusk is breathtaking. There's some downclimbing to do, but we hurry, since we spot a storm building in the distance. Shortly after, it starts raining, and, with darkness setting in, it also starts getting cold. We can't figure out how far the refuge still is. In the storm, the darkness is thick, the ground very slippery, and I'm freezing. The track suddenly veers off what had looked like a trail. We have to follow a traverse that grows increasingly steep, and, as a result, slippery. There's a light on the other side of the valley, but the track doesn't seem to head that way. I turn to check if the two teams we'd shown the way to are catching up, and I see, I'm certain of it, hundreds of tiny lights racing down along the trails, heading toward that light in the valley. Hundreds of little torches, like a swarm chasing each other. The sight leaves me stunned, and I call the others over, trying to come up with some scientific explanation for the phenomenon. It turns out to be a village festival, brilliantly orchestrated by the valley's shepherds, who'd fitted small LED lights onto the sheep's collars as they returned to the fold. Roby and Luca nod along, but they're focused on finding the route, since the weather's getting worse. We spot lights above us, and lights that seem to be heading toward us. It's hard to tell which way to go. We decide to follow the track, even though the slope it crosses has slid away. It feels impossible that we're actually meant to keep going. We send our position via GPS spot and call the organization, who tell us the guides are climbing up to reroute the course, to avoid the landslide, and we're caught right in the middle of it. We shout and curse at the approaching lights. They yell at us to keep moving, get out of there. Easier said than done. I'm at the breaking point, I'm first in line, focused on not slipping, but one foot in two doesn't hold, I use my poles like ice axes, but even those aren't enough, sometimes they slide on the slope too. I want to stop and put crampons on, but I can't sit down or lift a foot to fit them without sliding. I crank my headlamp to max power, trying to figure out where to place my feet, and unfortunately glance down, there's only the drop, and, much further below, though I can't see it, I can hear a stream. I can't hold a straight line, and I'm gradually sliding down toward the edge of the landslide, where it plunges over the drop. I suffer from vertigo, and often, in precarious moments balanced over a void, I catch myself thinking that, rather than keep suffering, it'd almost be easier to just let go, but those are only fleeting thoughts. This time it's not just vertigo, I'm genuinely terrified of falling. I have to do something to get out of this, my legs are shaking. I test the ground with every step before putting weight on it, planting the uphill pole gripped halfway down its shaft (thanks, NW) and the downhill one from the very top, trying to distribute my weight as evenly as possible before lifting the other foot. I think of nothing, not that I could fall, not that I could slip, I'm totally absorbed in repeating these basic motions, I don't hear the stream roaring below us, I don't see the rain or the mud sliding past, nothing exists except the cone of light illuminating my feet. Slowly, after a stretch of time that feels endless, the slope eases, and I start running to flee the danger I'd just escaped. When I reach the trail descending off the ridge, I turn to check on Luca and Roberto, but see only darkness. I'd been sure they were right behind me. I shout in their direction, but my voice gets swallowed by the rain, the wind, the stream, all roaring back at me in turn. I don't know what to do. If I stand still, I'll freeze, but I can't bring myself to go back into that hell. I shout and signal to the guides, who are heading up to reroute the course around the landslide I've just escaped. They don't hear me. Maybe they turned back, maybe I've descended too far. I have to retrace my steps, we can't lose each other. Finally, I see a light coming toward me, it can only be one of them. I light up Luca's face, and see fear etched across it. He, always granite-solid, unshakeable, is pale, and looks utterly exhausted. Neither of us says a word, and we don't see Roby. After what feels, to us, like an eternity, he finally emerges from the darkness too. He's wearing his crampons. I won't even try to describe his face, he mumbles something about the edge, about death, says his whole life flashed before his eyes, though he's also puzzled that he saw his mother, not his kids. For a moment, the three of us lock eyes, lit up by our headlamps, and understand we've just taken an enormous risk, and, luckily, made it out in one piece. It's a dramatic moment, but also a deeply intimate one. We're standing on the edge of a ravine, in the rain, a freezing wind blasting over our heads, and we're just happy to be together again, all three of us.

In truly critical moments, we manage to tap into some primal survival instinct that instantly processes all the information and experience we have, helping us stay focused on finding a way out.

When we reach the trail, we see the other teams who'd taken the ridge already descending, we wave, there's not even a need to say it out loud, but our race ends at Col du Doran. In reverent silence, we descend and head, subdued, toward the refuge, and finally, the rain stops. Each of us lost in our own thoughts. The tension slowly fades.

Sometimes, at night, exhaustion turns shadows into fantastical creatures, and I swear I can see, on the white stones scattered along the valley, drawings that look almost ink-drawn, in a Captain Harlock style, pirates, skulls, spiderwebs, each one more striking than the last. I think it'd be great to turn these into tees for Wild Tee. I picture the shepherd (a genuine artist) painting them during the long hours spent waiting while the flock grazes.

We reach the refuge and don't say a word about what happened, we decide to rest for a few hours, to leave the memory of that awful night behind us.

The next day, the sky is clear, and we continue on our way with renewed calm. We want to finish the loop without rushing, savoring every meter of these final kilometers.

After what we've been through, the race's ordinary difficulties actually make us smile, and we head off, joking, toward the 2,000 meters of elevation gain waiting for us at kilometer 260 (even writing that number is exhausting).

The tension fades, time stops mattering, the pain disappears, and it's just the three of us and the mountain. We know that, sooner or later, we'll reach our destination. We start visualizing the finish, or rather, an image that so often works far better than any finish banner: a nice lunch out in the sun, washed down with good beer, taking all the time in the world to put our thoughts back together.

The difficulties aren't over, but the experience we've built up along the way comes in handy for facing them with the right dose of irony. Because, sure, to scramble up the Passage du Dérochoir half-frozen in the fog and still laugh like idiots, you definitely need a fair share of it.

The trails before and after Refuge de Plate (the guys running it are fantastic, and we had one of the best meals of the whole week) are the very essence of Trail, a perfect #todaysplayground, and despite the 280 kilometers already in our legs, we run every bit of it.

We're so wired toward picking the harder alternative that we push on along an exposed ridge, taking the wrong route, instead of downclimbing along the actual trail.

I feel good, tendon aside, but I've pushed that out of my thoughts, that's a subject I'll deal with in the days that follow.

A stunning sunset welcomes us and carries us toward the final climb up to Col de la Brévent. On the other side, Chamonix waits, where, during our absence, finishers from every other race have been streaming in. We're almost afraid to leave behind the silence and solitude that's been our whole world for nearly a week.

I'd dreaded the elevation gain, but instead I climb well, I could even push harder. Getting the answer to my doubts, being able to climb at a solid pace, is an enormous satisfaction.

Once again, the magic of ultra trail has worked its spell: what seemed impossible at the start has turned into a massive life experience.

P.S.: with a stunning lack of tact, my adventure companions, the very next day, completely shatter my illusions, telling me there was no flock of sheep with lights running around at all. Sleep deprivation very often causes hallucinations that take the shape of our deepest fears, tree trunks turn into bears ready to charge, shadows into monsters chasing us, forests into endless tunnels, but this was the first time mine had ever taken such a poetic shape.

Over 135 hours, both Roberto and I went through two pairs of Bryce shorts and three tees each, and we also tested the new Rockies socks and the Appalachian midlayer, launching in 2019.