More →]]> The second stage between Mae Kha and Sop Kai has the same distance (49k) but a smaller elevation (2250m instead of+ 3000m) than the 1st stage. It will be important to manage efficiently the series of running days. After a first and tough day it will be interesting to see how the shape is. Hopefully the night will be good and relaxing in the quiet village of Mae Kha. In the morning a beautiful sunrise will escort us on the way up to the mountains that overlook Mae Kha. We will take the opportunity to look at the beautiful village down and the Chiang Mai valley further. We will enjoy this magnificient view and the wild nature that will surrounds us.

After leaving Mae Kha we will cross some rice paddies before attacking a walk up in the jungle to Doi Pha Dam (1370m). The track is straight and steep in the forest. It looks like a long ordeal or rather a tough pilgrimage, because after reaching the summit we will go down to the sacred temple of Wat Prabat Si Loi. The temple is popular with Thais for its beautiful and lonely surrounding and for its famous Buddha footprint. I tried to understand the origin of this footprint by discussing with a local person. Unfortunately I need still to take few more Thai lessons to understand exactly the full story!

Leaving Wat Prabat Si Loi we will run down a beautiful and wild dirt road to the valley of Pha Daeng. We will enjoy a splendid scenery of the surrounding mountains before entering this little and quiet valley. The original vegetation is perfectly mixed with crops (mainly rice) and the Karen tribe villages. It creates a beautiful atmosphere.

Anyway, it’s not complicated, leaving Wat Prabat Si Loi, it will be an explosion of beauty. We won’t limit ourselves to few beautiful pieces. Like for a gourmet menu, we will taste every meals: rice terraces, rivers and gorges, preserved villages, jungle and bamboo forests, mountain sceneries. On the next 20k we won’t miss anything.

Approaching the jungle out of the valley of Pha Daeng, progress in the jungle will not be easy although the trail there will have been cleaned few days before the race. It will be quite an adventure to cross it. After this jungle we will tackle the way up to the Hmong tribe village, Mong Ngoa. The difficulty of the ascent will succed to the difficulty of the track; the mountains sceneries will succeed to the dense and confined atmosphere of the jungle.

Arriving in the Hmong village of Kai Noi, we will have few last kilometers gown to do until reaching Sop Kai. We will spend the night in this small Thai village alongside the beautiful Mae Taeng river.

More →]]> This stage of “transition” will be much welcome for our group. It will allow us to relax a litlle bit after 4 days of intense running. After a pretty night in a great guesthouse with a magnificent scenery on the mountains at the border with Myanmar, I hope the batteries will be fully reloaded. With a great and quick trail run (another beautiful day with another nice atmopshere in this place also called “Little Switzerland”) this will be a perfect recovery day.

Here we are in the “extreme” Northern Thailand in a wild hilly less-touristic sometime-dangerous area due to its proximity with Myanmar. Here as often the mountains have defined the borders between two countries. Anyway sometimes the border is not clearly defined. There are still areas of friction and many military camps to avoid one country annexing a part of the land of its neighbour. Here the green mountains succeed to each other. Thais enjoy going there in winter to taste the freshness and beauty of the place. In this part of Thailand temperatures can drop down to 5 ° C at night in November and December.

We will begin our day by running in a deep valley alongside the foothill of a high and steep mountain range. In this great atmosphere looked down by green mountains, we will follow the Myanmar border to the north. After 15k we will go up to reach the Chinese village of Ban Luang. The further we will move on our journey, the closer we will go to the border with Myanmar. We will finally end up crossing it on a few hundred meters before reaching Nor Lae. Previously we will have ran in a jungle atmosphere on a nice trail at the foot of Doi Ang Khang, the highest summit in this area (2000m). We will looked down the valley in a series of small ascents and descents in wild landscapes.

We will hope to reach Nor Lae in the early afternoon to enjoy this peacefully village and save much energy before tackling the next crazy stage.