We’ve never been to Death Valley, let alone traipse around it in the hottest month ever recorded. But that’s exactly what ultrarunners Marshall Ulrich and Dave Heckman decided to try recently, ending up half-dead but victorious on their 16-day, 425-mile hell hike. Here’s a snapshot from Outside Magazine’s Joe Spring on how it was done.

Despite burying 37 caches of water and food (MREs, Cheetos, and freeze-dried meals from Expedition Foods) at strategic spots around the park, both men lost a considerable amount of weight. The five-foot-nine, 61-year-old Ulrich dropped ten pounds, and the 38-year-old Heckman dropped 25 pounds. There was a lot of suffering. When the duo worked over eight hours to climb out of the mostly trail-less Saline Valley, a roughly 5-mile trek that gains 5,000 feet in elevation, Ulrich started to hallucinate and took several naps. Heckman stepped in and carried Ulrich’s pack up the final section. Ulrich said it was, “”an ass kicker, not one of my finer moments and in fact one of my worst.” At least the pair had the views offered by a mostly untrammelled landscape: one park ranger, a couple of cars, abandoned mining shacks, an operating gold mine, reptiles, and Charlie Manson’s old hideout. When the pair finished, they immediately put ice cubes in their mouths and turned on the radio for their car ride home.

Read more about how these two admirable loons survived this insane expedition here. (via OutsideOnline.com).