The Teton Range / DOI
Editor’s note: The following story was produced by WyoFile, a Wyoming-based nonprofit news organization, and is reposted here with their permission.
When 32-year-old ultra runner Michelino Sunseri collapsed in exhaustion in the Lupine Meadows parking lot on the morning of Sept. 2, he thought he had just achieved an impossible dream.
Sunseri had raced to the top of the iconic Grand Teton, slapped the pinnacle, then flown back down the chimneys, ledges, boulder fields and miles of trail in an attempt to break the fastest known time, or FKT, of a trailhead-to-summit-and-back attempt. Sunseri accomplished this feat — all 13.2 miles and 7,064 feet of elevation gain — in an astonishing two hours, 50 minutes and 50 seconds.
By doing so, he toppled by more than two minutes a record that had stood for 12 years. Or so he thought.
During his effort, Sunseri cut at least one switchback to avoid a crowded trail. The practice is forbidden in Grand Teton National Park. When word of the transgression reached national park rangers and Fastest Known Time, the organization that keeps these speed records, Sunseri’s feat was disqualified.
“Based on our conversation with the NPS and in accordance with our own guidelines, we have decided to reject Sunseri’s submission,” Allison Mercer, Fastest Known Time director, told WyoFile in a Wednesday email. “We discussed it extensively” before reaching the decision, she added.
The decision strips Sunseri of an official record he devoted years of meticulous work and planning toward. While he claims the area in question wasn’t clearly marked as closed, he has also vowed to return to the peak next summer for a fresh attempt on the officially accepted route.
In the rarefied air of high-mountain athletics, the incident has spurred debate about what constitutes appropriate behavior for mountain users and the leeway taken for the sake of reaching nearly unattainable goals.
The attempt
Sunseri, an ultra runner and The North Face athlete, first set eyes on the jagged 13,775-foot crown of the Teton Range in 2020, he said, and was immediately struck with a desire to try to set a speed record on it. At the time, he was on a road trip with his then-girlfriend and looking for a new home.
That first compulsion is little embarrassing now, he admits. He didn’t know squat about the mountain’s moods or technical terrain. He called a running friend to float the idea. His buddy quickly disabused him of the fantasy.
“He’s like, ‘No, dude. You don’t just like, show up to the Tetons and go put down an FKT effort on the Grand … that’s not how it works,” Sunseri said.
Sunseri heeded his advice to instead try the nearly 40-mile Teton Crest Trail for his first local speed record attempt. On Oct. 5, 2020, he completed that route in six hours, 21 minutes, 40 seconds, notching the FKT.
During that crest run, Sunseri also decided to move to the Tetons. He remembers the moment clearly, soon after he topped Hurricane Pass and confronted a glorious vista of peaks, basins, alpine lakes and drainages. “I was like, ‘this is where I want to be,’” he said.
He moved to Driggs, Idaho, within weeks, finding work bartending during the winters to help finance his running. By that time Sunseri had set speed records and posted top-10 finishes in such grueling events as the Pike’s Peak Marathon, the Speedgoat 50 and the Mt. Ashland Hill Climb.
Once settled in the shadow of the Tetons, Sunseri resolved to take advantage of the proximity, he said, and “go all in on this mountain range.” He studied the routes and records of the mountains, he said, began exploring them and set a goal to break some FKTs.
He hadn’t forgotten the Grand Teton. But when he first climbed it in August 2021, the effort took more than seven hours. “I thought to myself, ‘Man, there is no way I can run it in two hours and 53 minutes. That is insane!’”
The two hours, 53 minutes was a reference to the fastest known time. Andy Anderson, a national park climbing ranger known for speed mountaineering, had set that record in August 2012. Anderson had shaved one minute off the record set just 10 days prior by famous Spanish long-distance athlete Killian Jornet. When Jornet reset the record, he became the first to log a sub-three-hour effort and took the mantle from ultra-running pioneer Bryce Thatcher, who had held it since 1983.
