Gerd Nunner of Santa Fe. AP photo courtesy of Gerd Nunner
SANTA FE, N.M. (by Staci Matlock, courtesy AP) — Gerd Nunner is a little crazy about the Grand Canyon.
The Santa Fe businessman has walked from the South Rim to the North Rim and back again 31 times in less then 20 hours each time, wearing knee supports on his bad knees.
So maybe he’s just crazy.
But the German native is a nice guy with a gleeful laugh who looks younger than his 50-plus years, so perhaps there’s something to his almost obsessive long-distance hiking.
Nunner’s left many a younger hiker in the dust on these marathon treks. “I kick ass with 30-year-olds,” he said.
On Halloween, he completed his first nonstop, triple crossing of the canyon starting at the South Rim and ending at the North Rim, for a total of 63 miles in less then 26 hours. It was an all-night walk under an almost full moon. The canyon glowed. “It was the most spectacular night hike I’ve ever done,” he said. “I was blown away.”
Still, that jaunt was a little much even for an iron-man hiker like him. “I don’t think I’ll do it again,” he said.
Nunner grew up walking in Wurzburg, Germany, a town surrounded by rolling hills near Frankfurt. There, families take long walks on evenings and weekends. At 14, a group invited him to hike in the Alps. By 17, he was solo climbing ice walls. “That I survived was really cool,” he said.
“Hiking disciplined me. I learned to judge myself, to not give up, even when I’m hurting,” Nunner added. “It helped me tremendously in my professional life.”
Nunner moved to the U.S. in 1990 and lived in Boston before moving 15 years ago to Santa Fe, where he owns a general electronics business. In the Southwest, he found a whole new landscape to explore.
He made his first trek into the Grand Canyon in November 2000, hiking down from the South Rim to the Colorado River and back up in one day 14 miles, a 5,000-foot elevation gain.
“I was in heaven,” Nunner said. “The signs say don’t try to hike down and back up in the same day. I felt fine.”
He tried it again in March. “It was the same canyon, but a totally different feel,” he said.
His best time for that trip is three hours and 50 minutes.
Nunner was hooked. He often had business trips to Phoenix and Las Vegas, Nev. He began adding in an extra day so he could hike the canyon. He did the same hike another 18 times before he decided to try going from the South Rim to the North Rim and back in one day. Among Grand hikers, the rim-to-rim-to-rim journey — 42 to 46 miles — is known as the Death March.
He prepped by hiking the Atalaya Trail near St. John’s College twice a day. Then he started going up and down the South Rim twice in a day to see if he could handle the double crossing.
He finished his first Death March in less then 17 hours. “I thought ‘Wow, this was a once in a life time event!’ ” Nunner said. “Then on the drive home, I decided it could be an annual event.”
At some point, he began doing it multiple times in a year. This fall, he completed six Death Marches, plus the triple crossing he did on Halloween.
His personal goal is to do the Death March 50 times.
Nunner never hikes the Grand Canyon in the summer. But he has hiked the canyon in all three other seasons, in every imaginable weather rain, blistering heat, 12 degrees below zero, snow.
He’s become a “local” at the canyon. He gets the same room at the Holiday Inn Express without asking for it. The local Pizza Hut gives him a discount. The rangers know him. Even the mules that pack in gear on the trails know him, he said.
To stay in shape for his Grand Canyon hikes, Nunner hikes the Atalaya Trail every day in the summer and fall. In the winter, he alternates hiking and skiing. In the spring, he adds running, training with the track athletes he helps coach at Santa Fe Prep, including his son, Derek.
He drinks electrolytes and varies his diet on the Death Marches pasta salad, energy bars, nuts. “You can’t eat Power Bars the whole day,” he said.
On his first double crossing, he lost seven pounds because he didn’t drink enough fluids. Now he can make the 42-mile hike without losing a pound.
He starts his long treks with a head lamp, long before dawn, timing his hikes so he can be heading up the South Rim as the sun sets, “when no one is there. When it is my canyon.”
For people who want to try a Death March, Nunner recommends first they hike La Luz Trail in the Sandia Mountains, up and down, twice.
Nunner’s wife, Stephanie, sounds benevolently patient about his passion for the Grand Canyon. She likes to hike, but she doesn’t go with him. “He goes at such a pace that few people can keep up with him,” she said.
Nunner has a new goal for summer hiking all the 14,000 foot peaks in Colorado but he doesn’t think he’ll ever grow tired of hiking the Grand.
The canyon is his therapist, his special place. “On any week or month, even in a day, it’s different,” he said. “It’s a place of peace. It’s a walk in paradise.”
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Information from: The Santa Fe New Mexican, http://www.sfnewmexican.com
Copyright 2010 The Associated Press.
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