Into the Wild
Frozen Head State Park in deeply forested eastern Tennessee, just a hop, skip and a jump from Knoxville, enjoyed its annual — dubious — claim to infamy just a few weeks ago. Nestled tightly in the Crab Orchard Mountains, the park is peppered with 14 peaks comprised of 300 million year old Paleozoic sandstones and shales, each groaning north of 3000 feet in elevation from Flat Fork Valley, itself etched into the hardscape by the turgid and dismissive Emory River. The region’s rich mesophytic forest is studded with thick composite canopies of white oak, basswood, birch, ash, sourwood, walnut and blackgum trees. Suffocating carpets of chest-high underbrush blanket much of Frozen Head’s 24,000 acres making for a disorienting and forbidding untrammeled wilderness. Timber rattlesnakes, poisonous amphibians, mountain lions, bobcats and black bears finish off what the underbrush couldn’t and are among the forest’s longtime inhabitants who proudly fortify Frozen Head as among the least disturbed areas of Tennessee’s Cumberland range. So it’s absolutely fitting for Frozen Head to host the most EXTRA of ultramarathons in the world. Famously known as the Barkley Marathons, the Barkley differs dramatically from other ultramarathons in that while its contemporaries are setup for participant success, the Barkley is expertly designed for you to fail. Of 1260 capacity-constrained entrants since 1986, only 17 have completed the ruthlessly beastly borderline inhumane course. Popular and mere pedestrian marathons in NYC, Boston and Chicago ain’t got nothing on the Barkley. By design, not much does.
The first gauntlet to navigate in accepting the challenge of the 100 mile Barkley is figuring out how exactly to apply. There is no website, no socials of any kind; certainly no DMs to leverage in currying favor. Instead, applicants must suss out the showrunner’s address and pen an essay in answer to the question: “Why I should be allowed to run the Barkley.” Include a $1.60 application fee and you’re entitled to an immediate interminable wait. Thousands apply and thousands are ghosted. Only 40 runners are selected annually. Those whose essays are deemed compelling are then subjected to a battery of written questions. Past queries include “Explain the Great Unconformity”, “What would the Gettysburg Address look like composed in Sawveh”, “Who built the Khatt Shebib?” and “What will be the 119th element on the Periodic Table?”. Exactly. Exhausted yet? It’s said that applicant responses to such precise questioning often reflects one’s ability to complete the Barkley. The raw numbers dispute this assertion. Successful applicants are mailed a Letter of Condolence outlining when (roaming date in March) and where to report (Big Cove campground) and what not to bring (everything). First-time runners are to gift the Barkley a vehicle license plate to hang in eternal posterity at the start gate. Returning runners are to bring with them a pack of Camel cigarettes for race organizers. Well, just because. So yah, not quite your father’s ultramarathon.
So you’ve decided to adventure yourself a participant in the Barkley. You’ve seemingly passed two written exams, paid your $1.60 registration fee and have tucked into your backpack your front license plate. A rusted yellow gate hanging purposefully between two low-slung moss and bird poop encrusted rock pilings officially marks the Barkley’s beginning and end point. Dozens of tents collect around the yellow gate as runners anticipate the telltale siren of a conch shell which marks the beginning of the race. At this point you’ve already received your race bib and have hand-transcribed the official course map (posted not far from the yellow gate) onto a blank map you’ve received from organizers. A printed set of directions is provided but are of limited use as they are as mercurial and unhelpful as the questions posed at the application stage. IN all, the Barkley is crafted of an arduous 20 mile unmarked loop that takes full advantage of Frozen Head’s vast, unsympathetic expanse. You repeat the loop FIVE times, reversing it every other loop. Each loop’s 12,000 feet of accumulated vertical climb only add to the grim misery. The loop is said to have been inspired by a daring 1977 escapee from nearby Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary (a part of the Barkley course since inception). He was found 54 hours later, eight miles away lying in a cold pile of leaves facedown, hungry, seriously injured — defeated — yearning for the secured safety of his prison cell. Such is the power of the Frozen Head outdoors. At the Barkley, just as with the escapee, you are on your own. There are no trailing support teams nor any Gatorade stations lovingly dotting the race course. Medic tents are the things of city folk and absolutely absent here. NO electronic devices, no race trackers. Just your hand-drawn map, the provided glib printed directions and a compass. To ensure that you’re not cutting corners, 13 carefully chosen books are precisely placed along the loop (pay attention to those directions) where to prove you’ve found them you must retrieve the page number that corresponds to your bib number. For this reason, you’re assigned a new bib number for each of the five loops. If, that is, you make it that far. Stomping through the underbrush, traversing rocky ascents, negotiating root-addled trails alongside unsuspecting wildlife and doing so at speed are among the highlights that runners seek and curse in the same breath. Oh yes, one final detail. All five loops must be completed in 60 hours. Sleep? Who needs it.
Most runners who enter get lost. Once poor soul in 2006 endured a 32-hour ordeal at the Barkley where he veered way off-course and clear into another county. He was later credited with having covered just two miles of the course. A film crew member who was documenting last year’s race vanished for 16 hours into the clutches of the Barkley before a search party was dispatched to successfully locate him. And he had a cell phone (ultimately useless without a signal to latch onto). Such are the frightful conditions runners can expect. They can expect failure as well. As each runner mercilessly gives up before time is called, they must pass the yellow gate that so indelibly marked the start of their traumatic misadventure. Each is treated to a bugle sadly renditioning “Taps” in a personalized soundtrack to remorseful failure. Over the course of the past two decades, the bugle player has mastered the tune having had the benefit of 1200+ performances.
Since 2017 (sans a skip year for Covid in 2020), there have been no Barkley finishers. All have come to the Tennessee outback from around the world only to be chased away by Southern discomfort. That is, until three weeks ago. That’s when miracle-of-miracles, the Barkley for the first time ever output THREE finishers: Frenchman Aurélien Sanchez, American John Kelly and Belgian Karel Sabbe. All under the 60 hour time limit by a whisper-thin margin and independent of one another as each was sent on opposing loops with differing paces. Race organizers pointed to pristine weather conditions for the bountiful 2023 crop of success, unlikely to be repeated in the future. Further, the beleaguered trio didn’t split the purse because there is, defiantly, no purse to split. Killjoys. Whatever the case, the legend of the Barkley Marathons roars on as it shapeshifts into an invasive species of sorts intractable and indistinguishable from its native habitat in Frozen Head State Park. Its iconic status makes minions of its ultramarathon competitors — and its participants. Which begs only one question: “Why I should be allowed to run the Barkley?” If you know the answer, the 2024 application process begins NOW.
