History of Badwater

In 1849, a group of pioneers crossed Death Valley in search of a route to the gold fields of California. When finally making their escape from the valley, the group bid it farewell with the words "Good bye Death Valley!" christening it with the name it is known by today. A member of this party, William Lewis Manly recorded the difficulties posed in crossing Death Valley in his autobiography.

Badwater got it name when an early surveyor could not get his mule to drink from the pool. He wrote on his map that the location had "bad water," and the name stuck.

The History of The Race

Originally, the run was conceived as being between the lowest and the highest points in the contiguous United States: Badwater, Death Valley (-282 ft) and Mt. Whitney's summit (14,496 ft). The two are only eighty miles apart on the map, but the land route between the two points is substantially longer, 146 miles, because of detours around lakebeds and over mountain ranges. Additionally, since the finish-line is 11 miles from the nearest trailhead, anyone who competes over the 146 mile race-distance must be capable of a total physical effort of 157 miles. Due to the two mountain ranges that must be crossed between Badwater and Whitney, the course's cumulative elevation gain exceeds 19,000 feet (5,800 m).

Al Arnold first attempted the route in 1974 but was pulled off the course after eighteen miles with severe dehydration.

After vigorous sauna-training and desert-acclimatization, he attempted the run again in 1975. This time, a knee injury aborted the run at fifty miles. In 1976, training injuries kept him from even beginning his annual attempt on the course.

In 1977 he successfully pioneered the course, summiting Whitney eighty hours after his start at Badwater.

From: 1987: The Year Badwater Became a Race

In 1986, two Californians, Tom Crawford and Mike Witwer, tried to organize an official race from Badwater to Mount Whitney. Twenty-two ultramarathoners signed on, but the event was cancelled when the organizers failed to obtain liability insurance – not for the runners but for the support crews. Crawford and Whitwer, deciding to tackle the distance on their own, completed the course in 70:27.

On July 31, 1987 at 6:31 AM, five runners started the first race from Death Valley to Mount Whitney. Two women—Eleanor Adams and Jean Ennis—and three men—Crawford, Ken Crutchlow and David Bolling—began the course at the same time.

Adams, a 39-year-old Briton and the first woman to exceed 200 miles in a 4h-hour race, wasted no time racing into the lead. Responding to an ad for the race, she had written, “My philosophy in life is to never pass up an opportunity. If you do, you never know when it’ll come again.”

Sources include: Wikipedia, Untraveledroad.com