My opinion (I don't know the Sierra Club's position) is to encourage such activities, even in primitive areas. It's important to have the public associate wild lands that are given wilderness or similar status with a use that involves people - minus their machines. Too much of the public still perceives wilderness as 'closed' lands because they can't make that association. The impact on the area caused by media coverage and support groups, while negative, is relatively insignificant, especially for an event on the Mt. Whitney Trail, which certainly doesn't offer much opportunity for solitude. I passed over a hundred people on the trail going up and down Mt Whitney, and there were over 30 people on top when I did reach the summit. While on top, a woman's hiking group from the Bay Area unfurled a banner proclaiming, "Good girls go to heaven, bad girls go everywhere." On the way down, I noticed that a marmot had gotten into a bag of garbage and food left near their packs and scattered partially eaten food all about, a situation I couldn't leave without a few pointed comments. After one of the 'bad girls' decided to reward the rodent with a pile of trail-mix, I stuck around to make sure the mess got cleaned up. That got me a 'good' cold shoulder, although one of their group eventually did collect the trash into a garbage bag. - But I've digressed. For those of you who read through all this to get statistics on the race itself, well, here they (finally) are:
Out of the 8 runners who started at Badwater Basin, 4 finished with the following times:

45 hr, 05 min
45 hr, 54 min
60 hr, +
80 hr, +		 Tom Possert
Chuck Jones
Linda Elam
Doug Michael		 Set a new record; prior record was 45 hr, 15 min set in 1987
Was slowed on the Sierra Crest by altitude sickness
Of Modesto; first woman to finish this run twice
Of Grass Valley; time includes night at Trail Camp to avoid
lighting and snow on Whitney
written by John Sarna
Desert Wisdom by Erie Stanely Gardner 1931-1934

" . . . When a man finally feels the last agony approaching in the desert, he starts to tear off his clothing and begins to run. Then, at last, stoops and starts to, dig at the desert with his bare hands, shredding the flesh away from the bone.
..."
The desert was merciless. The sun glared with eye-aching brilliance down upon the varicolored sand. There wasn't a breath of wind. The hot air came radiating up off the rocks as though it had been blasted from an oven.
But we three knew the desert. She was cruel, and yet her cruelty was kindness. The price of a mistake is pain. Therefore, one learns not to make mistakes.
Which is why I love the desert. It is a place where character is tempered in a furnace of heat. It is the cruelest mother a man ever had, and therefore the kindest."


"We didn't ask any questions, and no one asked questions of us. We were in the real desert now, where a man may do as he pleases."
 
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