Marine Battles Heat, Cramps on Death Valley-to-Peak Run

Despite stomach cramps and searing heat, Marine Corps Maj. John Bates said he was “emotionally high” Thursday as he neared the halfway mark in his nonstop, 146-mile run from the bottom of Death Valley to the top of 14,464-foot Mt. Whitney.

“Emotionally, I feel very good,” Bates said 15 hours into the run that began at 8 p.m. Wednesday on a salt flat 282 feet below sea level. “But I had stomach cramps and threw up at 2 a.m.”

The stomach cramps returned 23 hours into the run, about 70 miles from the Mt. Whitney summit, and Bates was forced to take a lengthy rest.

Bates, 42, who lost a lung when he was wounded in Vietnam, hopes to shave five hours off the run’s current record of 45 hours, 15 minutes.

“Getting sick is part of the deal in this kind of a thing,” he said.

Still, his wife, Stephanie, 36, who followed Bates in an air-conditioned automobile, was very concerned about his health and begged her husband to eat more tuna sandwiches.

“They’re a miracle cure--lots of salt,” she said after helping her husband change running shoes.

As Bates’ bobbing figure blurred behind a curtain of heat waves down the road, she muttered, “I have been thinking about just yanking him into the car and driving home.”

Bates, whose conversation Thursday afternoon had dwindled to mostly grunts, brief requests such as “more water” and “thumbs up” signs, would have none of it.

“I really think it is within reach,” Bates said, dousing his head and shoulders with cold water as he ran across a sizzling dry lake bed here. “Mt. Whitney by noon Friday.”

Bates’ route goes from Badwater, the starting point of the run, north along California 178 to California 190, then along 190 until it joins California 136. Bates plans to go north on 136 until it joins U.S. 395, near Lone Pine. From Lone Pine he plans to take Whitney Portal Road to the mountain.