Runner tackles mountainous 'triple crown'

HIGH UINTAS — Running a standard 26.2-mile marathon on paved roads is certainly a grueling, endurance-testing experience.

But then there's the next step up: mountain ultramarathons at even longer distances, where there may not even be trails at oxygen-starving high elevations — absolute stamina-testing ordeals, with no aid stations or anyone to cheer you on.

Craig A. Lloyd, 37, of Holladay, completed an unusual ultramarathon on July 16, running an estimated 29.2 miles over a 17,200-foot change in elevation while reaching Utah's three tallest summits — Kings, South Kings and Gilbert — all in less than 10 hours from his car and back.

His time of 9:41:46 from the Henry's Fork Parking lot and back shattered the previous unofficial record of 14:40.00, set by Davy Crockett in 2008.

"Awesome. That was one of the coolest things I've ever done," Lloyd said with a huge smile as he finished his adventure, much of it over trail-less ground.

He admits that a lot of the credit for his record-setting run has to go to his strategy — finding the shortest possible route for the run, even though it meant careening down some cliff faces and unstable rockslide areas.

His unorthodox route involved going to Gilbert Peak first, then descending a tricky slope to Gunsight Pass, next climbing up to Kings Peak and South Kings and then dropping down toward Gunsight directly — instead of climbing the Kings Summit a second time, as most people do.

That made his overall mileage significantly less than the route Crockett took.

Lloyd made big headlines in the Deseret News back in 2003 when he and Deseret News photographer Ravell Call hiked to Utah's three highest summits — Kings Peak (13,528 feet), South Kings (13,512) and Gilbert Peak (13,446) — in a single day from a wilderness base camp, the first known time for such a feat.

"Over time, the hike began to make a little buzz in the world of 'peak-bagging,' " Lloyd said. "People were making attempts at it themselves."

In 2008, Lloyd's wife convinced him to take up running, and he became addicted to trail running, as well as becoming aware of how far people were taking their peak bagging efforts — such as Crockett's car-to-car summit record.