Patricia Franco crushed Mt. Whitney Mountaineer's Route faster than any woman before her
When Patricia Franco first set eyes on Mt. Whitney she was at a low point. Two years later she reached the peak faster than any woman before her
Benjamin Spillman- Patricia Franco was feeling down but not out when she first saw Mt. Whitney in 2016
- Two years later she set the women's fastest known time on the Mountaineer's Route
- On same day Franco set record her boyfriend, Ryan Phebus, set an ascent record on the main route
- Franco hopes her story encourages other women to challenge themselves in the mountains
A typical hiker might take two days to get from Whitney Portal to Whitney Peak, the highest point in the lower 48 United States, and back again.
It took Patricia Franco four hours, 16 minutes and 37 seconds.
That was quick enough for Franco to set a women's fastest known time on Whitney's gnarly Mountaineer's Route, 54 minutes faster than prior record set in 2017 by Charity Dubberley.
While Franco’s GPS track shows she made quick work of Mt. Whitney, her path to setting the record was long and winding.
“It was pretty euphoric, I had a lot of self-doubt going into it,” said Franco, 26, describing the feeling of standing on the peak. “It was kind of this wave of relief, like years of stuff pent up getting there.”
In 2016 Franco dropped out of graduate school at the University of Oregon where she was studying philosophy.
A New Hampshire native who went to undergraduate school in Quebec, Canada and worked at Yellowstone National Park, Franco struggled to find her place in Oregon.
“I just was really kind of disenchanted with the whole thing,” Franco said.
In addition to having her bike stolen, Franco said she was turned off by typical trappings of life in a college town. She tried to escape by spending her weekends in Bend, Ore., and climbing in the Cascade Range.
Eventually, being a weekend warrior wasn’t enough to sate Franco’s thirst for the mountains, so she left school altogether.
“I just started driving down the coast and I ended up in Lone Pine at the base of Mount Whitney,” she said.
Unfortunately for Franco, a stress fracture in her shin kept her from immediately tackling the mountain that had suddenly captured her imagination.
“I was just kind of camped at the bottom of Mt Whitney in Alabama Hills just kind of moping,” Franco said.
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She continued her itinerant lifestyle for several more months, including some time in the Colorado Rockies before returning to the Sierra Nevada to live in Mammoth.
That’s when she started preparing for what would become a record-breaking time.
On Aug. 17, the day of her record-breaking attempt, Franco and her boyfriend, Ryan Phebus, 28, and their dog, a lab mix named Dexter, woke up early at Whitney Portal.
The night before they’d shared a campsite with a mother and daughter who were going to climb Whitney that same day via the more popular hiking trail to the top.
By the time Franco was awake and warming up the mother and daughter had left the site but not her mind.
"They were so sweet and kind ... I didn't even hear them leave," she said.
After breakfast of a tortilla with almond butter and strawberries, Franco took a pack of gummy bears, an 18-ounce bottle of water and her smartphone and started out.
It was a little rough at the beginning.
“I immediately started off going the wrong way, so I was kind of stressed out,” said Franco, who had scouted the route on three separate occasions.
She considered heading back and starting over, but instead decided to power through and find her route.
Things improved, and she set a strong pace to Iceberg Lake, where the route gets steeper.
“It was a really solitary experience. it was just me out there with my gummy bears and my water, I felt really good and really strong,” she said.
From there she had to ascend a 1,500-foot chute that included a waterfall to get to the summit block.
Franco said it mostly went well, although she smashed her back on a rock getting around the waterfall.
And once she reached the summit block there were some treacherous moments along the ridge to the peak.
“The rocks were icy, they looked dry, but they were icy,” she said of one stretch. “It was hard to run that section and it is a straight 4,000-foot drop to your death if you fall.”
Not long after, Franco found herself on the summit quicker than any woman had ever ascended the Mountaineer’s Route.
She stopped, briefly, to appreciate the totality of her journey to the peak.
“That all kind of came full circle, 2016 was definitely a low and now I’m here on the same mountain,” Franco said.
But there wasn’t time to dawdle if she wanted to break the round-trip record. So, after snapping a photo of her watch she headed down, where she had another encounter with the icy rocks, which affected her approach for the rest of the return.
“I slipped on one of those icy rocks and landed on my tailbone and could have slid down the mountain,” she said. "So, the whole way down I was just trying to mitigate risk while still moving forward.”
Andy Anderson of Truckee, Calif., who set the men’s fastest known time of three hours and three minutes on the same route in 2014 said the trip downhill can be as or more challenging than the ascent.
“It is hard terrain to move fast through, it is full of scree and steep slabs and scrambling,” Anderson said. “It is easy to lose your footing coming down.”
Once Franco returned to Whitney Portal and established the record, she learned she wasn’t the only record-breaker of the day.
Phebus, who, like Franco, is a competitive trail runner, set the men’s fastest known time for ascent on the hikers’ trail with a time of two hours, six minutes and 45 seconds.
He wasn’t planning to attempt the record but said that once he realized it was in sight he had to go for it.
The fact Franco was out on her own attempt was a helpful motivator, Phebus said.
“Knowing that Trish was out there busting her ass … kind helped motivate me to work hard,” he said.
Following the run, Franco said it was gratifying to see the stream of congratulations from friends responding to her Instagram post about the accomplishment.
"I kind of ride the high from the summit, like this is what it is all about," she said. "You can’t stay up there forever but you chase that feeling forever."
Although Franco is an elite trail runner today, she wasn't a competitive athlete in high school. She fell in love with the mountains in 2011 when she hiked about 1,500 miles of the Appalachian Trail.
As time passed she evolved to lighter and faster hiking and, eventually, trail running.
Franco is hopeful her journey will inspire others, particularly women, to pursue their own mountain dreams, even if those dreams don’t include speed records.
She cited the example of the mother and daughter team who shared her campsite the night before her record-breaking Whitney run as an example.
The fact it took them all day and into the night to do what Franco did in a few hours doesn’t diminish their accomplishment, she said.
“That mother and daughter it took them more than 20 hours, that is way more of an achievement, the things they had to suffer through,” Franco said. “I want people to go for it, I just want to be part of raising the bar.”
Whitney Mountaineer’s Route fastest known times, car-to-car
Women:
Patricia Franco, 4 hours, 16 minutes, 37 seconds, Aug. 17, 2018
Charity Dubberley, 5 hours, 10 minutes, 51 seconds, Aug. 9, 2017
Tina Lewis, 5 hours, 36 minutes, 3 seconds, Aug. 16, 2017
Men:
Matt Dubberley, 2 hours, 38 minutes, 15 seconds, Aug. 2, 2015
Andy Anderson, 3 hours, 3 minutes, 5 seconds, Aug. 28, 2014
Brett Maune, 3 hours, 6 minutes, 39 seconds, Oct. 5, 2012