-I don't know if any of you have actually been to said switchback cut, but it is very clearly and obviously marked as being closed to public use. And of course nothing has grown back on it when folks going for fast times like Sunseri and lazy people trying to climb the Grand keep using the cutoff. The point of adding in switchbacks like that is long-term erosion control. Sure it harms a bit more vegetation in the moment to build a new trail, but the idea is people stop using the old trail, plants grow back over it and stop the erosion, and the new trail is better for the environment. Really not that complicated.
-Maybe there's a small band of friends around Sunseri who had agreed that the cutoff was ok, but this was by no means a community consensus the way he portrays it. Even in the FKT community, the majority of people are upset with what Sunseri did. FKT rules say that you go by the current record holders' precedent or do it even better. The current record is held by Andy Anderson, who did not cut the switchbacks. He beat Killian Jornet's time, who did cut the switchbacks. I know Anderson had told Sunseri that he didn't care either way whether or not Sunseri cut the switchbacks, but that does not preempt the rules of Grand Teton, especially with the existing record already being with the switchbacks.
-And then there's Sunseri's choice to go for this record on Labor Day weekend, which meant that the trail was super congested and led to his in-the-moment decision to cut the switchbacks on the way down.
- A lot of people in the area are upset with him because, prior to this, everyone going for fast times on the Grand Teton would stay on the switchbacks on the lower, officially maintained trail but cut the switchbacks on the unofficial climber's trail higher up the mountain. This was the policy that Grand Teton was unofficially ok with. By cutting the lower switchbacks, Sunseri forced the park service's hand where now they've said that absolutely no switchbacks can be cut, even the upper climber's trail ones.
-Sunseri seems like a really nice guy from everything I've heard about him, but I think he put a ton of himself into getting this record and got over-invested. That being said, at the end of the day I think it's ridiculous how much of a fiasco this has turned into. The park service should have just accepted Sunseri's offer to do volunteer trail work and the FKT not been accepted instead of turning it into this ridiculous circus. Thanks for coming to my TED talk!