Joe McConaughy Takes the John Muir Trail Record From François D’Haene

Joe “Stringbean” McConaughy finished at Happy Isles in Yosemite Valley before sunrise on Wednesday, 2 days and 16 hours after leaving Whitney Portal, and now holds the supported record for the 223-mile John Muir Trail. After two earlier bids had come up short, the 33-year-old from Seattle took 3 hours and 26 minutes off the mark François D’Haene set in October 2017, which also makes his run the quickest on the route in any style.

D’Haene’s 2 days, 19 hours and 26 minutes had been one of the more imposing numbers in fastest known time circles. According to the Fastest Known Time database, the men’s supported record came down steadily for 16 years, from Blake Wood’s 4 days, 22 hours in 1998 to Leor Pantilat’s 3 days, 7 hours and 36 minutes in 2014. D’Haene showed up a few weeks after winning his third UTMB title and cut more than 12 hours from it in one go. He has since added mountain records on the GR20 in Corsica and Nolan’s 14 in Colorado, while his John Muir Trail time outlasted every attempt made on it, including two of McConaughy’s.

McConaughy set off from Whitney Portal at 1:47 p.m. on Sunday, Sept. 20, and turned north once he had topped out on the 14,505-foot summit of Mount Whitney. His tracker put him almost exactly on D’Haene’s 2017 schedule through the 100-mile point and into Tuesday morning, iRunFar reported. From there the margin grew: about two miles at mile 135, more than nine by mile 185 on Tuesday evening, and 13 at Happy Isles after a final 40 miles in the dark. With rest and resupply time folded in, his overall average worked out to about 3.5 mph over some 47,000 feet of climbing.

Caroline Himbert, one of his pacers, came into the week holding a John Muir Trail record herself: from July 28 to 31 she ran the route northbound without support in 3 days, 16 hours, 36 minutes and 15 seconds, the fastest unsupported time by a woman. She climbed Whitney with him at the start and ran later sections at his side. “We’re running a lot of downhill and flats still, which is impressive,” she wrote in a text during the run on Tuesday, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

McConaughy won the Cocodona 250 in 2022 in 59:28:54, though his name is mostly tied to long trails. In 2014 he set the supported Pacific Crest Trail record in 53 days, 6 hours and 37 minutes, a mark that has since been lowered several times, and in 2017 he ran the Appalachian Trail self-supported in 45 days, 12 hours and 15 minutes. His FKT page also lists the Long Trail, the Arizona Trail and Ireland’s Wicklow Round, and he knows the John Muir Trail as a professional too, having led guided trips on it.

His first go at the supported record came in 2022 and his second in 2024, when, the Chronicle reported, he had slept so little that he lost track of where he was on the trail. His southbound unsupported run in August 2022, 3 days, 1 hour and 34 seconds, lasted as that record for only a few weeks before Jeff Garmire lowered it by less than 13 minutes. Garmire’s time now sits almost nine hours behind McConaughy’s new supported mark, which gives some idea of what a crew, pacers and resupplies are worth over 223 miles.

“It was so fun,” McConaughy told the Chronicle in a text after finishing on Wednesday. “It was one of those days where everything went well.”

The run has not yet been added to the Fastest Known Time database, which reviews each submission before listing it. Until it is, D’Haene’s name stays at the top of the men’s supported list on the site’s John Muir Trail page.