When Dr. Lisa Bliss, of Spokane, started a solo trek this summer from Death Valley to the top of Mount Whitney, all on foot, she knew failure could be the outcome.

For one, she would be pulling or pushing a 200-plus-pound cart filled mostly with water and supplies for 135 miles of the 146-mile course. She'd begin at Badwater, Death Valley, which is North America's lowest elevation at 280 feet below sea level, and end at Mount Whitney's peak, which at around 14,500 feet is the highest summit in the lower 48 states.

But just before midnight July 28, failure no longer was a concern. Bliss finished in 89 hours, 38 minutes, and 48 seconds. She says this makes her only the second person—and the first woman—to cover this course under the rule of being self-contained, meaning she couldn't accept any help or supplies.

"I did it, barely, but I was successful," says Bliss, a 43-year-old, 5-foot-1-inch avid runner weighing all of 95 pounds. "It was a combination of running, walking, and crawling, not literally, but a very slow walk."

When not running various peaks and valleys, her day job takes her to Inland Neurosurgery & Spine Associates PS, on Spokane's North Side, where she operates an affiliated practice called Northwest Sports & Spine PLLC. She is a physiatrist, or doctor who specializes in sports and spine medicine, and has been practicing here since 2003.

She does around seven ultramarathons a year, which are longer races than the marathon length of 26 miles and 385 yards. She began doing them in 1999 because she'd completed several marathons and wanted a higher challenge. Her running passion helps her relate better to clients, she adds.

"It helps me understand why they want to stay active," she says. "I can relate to athletes because I've been out with injuries before, and I definitely understand wanting to get back."

Her hobby of doing extreme sports also has drawn her to Death Valley before. For nine years, she volunteered as medical director for the Badwater Ultramarathon, a foot race on 135 miles of the same course she just completed, but it stops about 11 miles short of the climb to Mount Whitney's peak. She ran the Badwater race twice, and in 2007, she won it as the women's champion.

This year, instead, she decided to take an independent challenge thrown down by another ultramarathon runner, who emailed her that a woman probably couldn't do the entire trek to the summit unassisted. Before embracing the dare, though, Bliss decided she needed another motivation.

She sought a total $10,000 in pledges for her race to benefit a new education fund at Crosswalk, a shelter for homeless teens and at-risk teens that's operated by Volunteers of America of Eastern Washington and Northern Idaho. The fund mainly will help to pay testing fees for the teenagers who want to take general educational development tests toward a GED diploma, the equivalent to a high school diploma.

She's raised $9,500 to date.

"One of the messages I want to give the kids at Crosswalk is there's no failure in trying," Bliss says. "I didn't know if I could do this. There was a real possibility of failure, but I don't think the possibility of failure should keep us from trying."

"I chose to run for a charity because I wanted it to be more than a selfish endeavor," she adds. "I heard about the teens at Crosswalk and I found out it only costs $75 for a kid to get a GED. If a kid wants to get a GED, $75 shouldn't be an obstacle."

However, she says completing the longer course to the tip of Mount Whitney proved to be her toughest obstacle yet—not because of the heat that reached a maximum of about 118 degrees during four days—or even the below-freezing weather at the top. Rather, Bliss describes the steep, grueling mountain grades as she pulled her cart, which was attached to her at the waist by a harness.

A team of friends followed her, covering most of the way by vehicle, but couldn't assist. She slept a total of a little over an hour the entire time, though she took some 15-minute breaks on a mat spread out on the top of the cart.

"This was far more mentally challenging than anything else I've ever done because it was very slow at times, and because of the sleep deprivation," she says. "I said to myself, I could quit. I never wanted to quit. I just thought for a while, maybe it's physically impossible."

"Mile 42 is where you start the first big climb. The whole course has three mountain passes and the steepest is Townes Pass, which is 18 miles up an 8 percent grade. That 18 miles took me almost 21 hours because it was so difficult."

At the course's start, the cart was filled with just over 22 gallons of frozen water, high-calorie foods, clothing, a small cooking stove, and a few other supplies. On the flats and downhill, she ran with the cart in front of her. By the time she reached Mile 42, she estimates the cart weighed about 200 pounds.

The worst came as she moved up one of the steepest parts straight into wind gusts.

"I have the harness, hiking poles, and I was leaning as far forward as I could with 30 mile-an-hour wind gusts. It was all I could do to keep the cart from pulling me backwards."

For about 15 minutes, she says it felt like she wasn't making any progress, but eventually an idea came to her. She decided to conquer the grade by making tiny switchback moves as in skiing, or as she says, turning 45 degrees to move forward to the left, then moving 45 degrees to the right.

The other grades weren't as bad, she says, and when she reached the Mount Whitney Portal trail on the way to the peak, she ditched the cart for a backpack to hike the remaining portion. At the top, she and three friends who followed to witness her journey spent the night in a survival hut.

She's since seen a message in the slowest, hardest portion of her journey, which she shared with a group of Crosswalk teens at a barbecue celebration held after her return.

"Baby steps are what I tell the kids," she says. "Baby steps in the right direction will get you where you want to go. Some of the steps were two inches long, and there were tears. I said that to them."

"If you can't go straight into the headwinds with a 200-pound cart, just turn a little to the side," she adds. "Be flexible, adjust. It took me a long time to get to that decision, because I was so focused on going forward."

She also shares a personal connection to helping the teens with educational costs. When she was 19, she struggled working a full-time job and taking one or two classes at a community college. When she eventually applied at a university, her uncle helped pay some of her tuition, a gesture she's never forgotten, she says. She completed a psychology degree at Loyola University Chicago, summa cum laude, and later graduated from Northwestern University's medical school. She did her residency at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago.

She named her running cart, River Run, a bit of an oxymoron for the desert, but it denotes meaning in more ways than one.

"That was the name of my uncle's horse ranch in North Carolina," she says. "I thought about how the cart was a little oasis, and remembered my uncle, and how water is life when you're running through the desert."

Bliss has a map of the Death Valley Badwater course in her office, but she says she won't be doing the longer distance to Mt. Whitney's peak again. Instead, she says she'll help the man who dared her to race to the top if he ever needs assistance to complete the course. He tried the route in 2004, she says, and had to stop because of hypothermia.

"The ultra-run community is small," she says. "I had heard he had attempted it. He had heard about me. He did say, if anyone could do it, it was me. He was baiting me, and he helped me for two days. I hope he tries it again, and I'll help him."

"The real meaning in what I did was in helping the kids. To help them get a chance for an education. I thought about them during the journey."