They volunteer to plummet into the depths of mental and physical agony crossing questionable waters, gaping ravines, and brutal cliffs in the dead of night. Year after year, a new mêlée of poor souls offer themselves to the Barkley gods. Lost and alone, they struggle through hallucinations, extreme cold, heat, thunderstorms, sleet, and rock-bottom exhaustion while they navigate vast stretches of sinister, unmarked woodland with only a compass and their prayers. Today, people come from all over the world for the chance to annihilate their minds and bodies in a 60-hour, 100-mile, sleepless, nearly impossible gauntlet through the merciless mountains. Few even figure out how to enter the Barkley, fewer still come close to finishing it. Since 1986, the Barkley has been operating entirely under the radar, rising from a casual underground affair to a cult obsession. We’ll avoid Leonard’s Butt Slide, which propels you down at 45-degree gradient through several hundred feet of mud and saw briars. We won’t have to cross Son of a Bitch Ditch, a 10-foot-wide, 10-foot-deep gouge in the dense forest. The seven-hour trek up Bald Knob, I am told, is far better than scaling Big Hell, Rat Jaw, or Bird Mountain.
He wasn’t the least bit affected by the news. I explained that I was writing a big story on the Barkley Marathons - the world-famous ultra-marathon Lake founded and his life’s magnum opus. I’m here because he reluctantly agreed to let me tag along with him and his crew on their hike to the top of Bald Knob, the highest peak in Frozen Head. I’m not picking up an ounce of the humor or charisma I’d heard so much about. He seems cold, distant, mildly annoyed by my presence. I hustle from my car to where he’s standing and apologize. At a glance, he looks like a retired truck driver or a felon-turned-farmer. His long gray hair is pulled into a ponytail that hangs down his back. He’s wearing loose blue jeans, a flannel shirt, and a new pair of work boots. Lazarus Lake is standing next to a red Honda at the entrance to Frozen Head State Park in Wartburg, Tennessee, about an hour west of Knoxville.
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