Finally the race day arrived. We had been waiting for October 5 for a long time and were preparing for it for about 15 days. We hiked a total of 230 km to mark and recce the route of this trail race. And now the day has come when we will present the essence of these 15 days in front of the runners in the form of a race. Keeping everyone's safety in mind, we are ready and around Solang Valley with our volunteers and rescue team.
Let me tell you a little about this trail race, the name of the race is "Solang SkyUltra". There are 4 categories in it, 100 km, 60 km, 30 km and Mount Patalsu Challenge. There is also a cut off for these categories in which you have to finish your race by running within a certain time limit. These 4 categories will cover Solang Valley, Anjani Mahadev, Mount Patalsu Peak, Beas Kund, Kothi Top, Vashishtha Temple and Bhrigu Lake. Runners in the 100 km category will have to spend a night in the jungle.
The 100 km race starts on October 5 at 4 am. About 20 runners have participated in this category. I am standing on the stream coming from Anjani Mahadev so that no runner falls into the stream, I have been given the job of a helping hand. As soon as all the runners cross the Anjani stream, I leave from here with my partner Bharat to Goshal where I have to show the way to the runners and click their photos while crossing the Goshal bridge.
In the briefing held a day before, all the runners were told which path and route to follow. Although many runners were running as per the briefing, but I was bringing the few who had strayed from the path on the right path. From Goshal bridge, the runners will go to Vashishtha temple from where they will descend to the Kothi after a death climb. After all the runners cross the Goshal, we head towards Kothi village from here where the runners will reach in a short while.
We are part of the backend team and I along with my team have transported all the hydrants to the heights of the mountain on porters and horses. Our team has 50 volunteers, 20 media persons, 12 rescue team members and 10 people in our core team who are managing the event from their respective posts. By now it is 7 am and we are in Kothi and the Mount Patalsu Challenge has started on time at the start line.
We also take a round of British Bridge to check if everything is fine there or not. After talking to the team, I am satisfied and come back to Kothi village. From Kothi, our duty is now at Palchani Nala, here we have to manage the last leg of the race. From here the runners will go towards Beas Kund and from there they will climb the boulder zone and the dangerous Lady Leg. Here the runners will get the magical view of Hanuman Tibba and Friendship Peak.
By evening the runners have covered 80 km distance. And clouds have started appearing in the sky, maybe it is going to rain because the valley has been covered by dark clouds. We are all praying that it does not rain because if it rains then it will be very difficult. On the other hand, the winner of Mount Patalsu has set a new record of this category by completing the 14 km category in 02:19:17 hours. The first runner up was just 2 minutes behind.
We stayed at Palchani Nala for about 6 hours and during this time the runners of 100, 60 and 30 km category crossed this hydration point to go to Beas Kund. It has been 18 hours since the race started, the first runner of 100 km is moving towards the finish line after taking the last round of Beas Kund. Shashwat completed the 100 km long race in 20:14:23 hours, Alban was first in 60 km with 10:10:40 hours and the winner of 30 km category was Arun Tomar who took 03:41:25 hours to complete 30 km.
So our hard work of 15 days paid off, the event was very smooth. No runner got lost on the trail, no one got injured and there was no dispute of any kind. Our team congratulated each other after the race was over and we had a big party after the race in which all our volunteers, media persons and our core team were present. We danced a lot and ate our fill.
Disclaimer: This post is originally written in Hindi and I have used Google Translator to translate the Hindi text in English. All the photos have been clicked by me from POCO F1 android smartphone and edited in deskstop software adobe lightroom. Thumbnail created in dekstop adobe photoshop.