Embracing Community at Arches 50-Miler
Arriving in Moab and Rock Climbing in the Desert
The time is 6:00 AM and the faintest hint of light has just started rising over the horizon. I’m lazily rousing myself from the warmth of my van to go clear all the snow and ice off the windshield. After a couple hours of driving through fresh, falling snow in Montana the night previous I decided to call it quits and hope for clearer roads and better visibility for my long drive to Utah the next day.
With the van cleared and my hands comfortably numb from the negative temps, it was time to get a move on. A fulfilling mix of Sturgill Simpson’s music and John Clayton’s Natural Rivals audiobook detailing the rivalry between Gifford Pinchot and John Muir, in essence, conservationism and preservationism, plus a few cups of coffee thrown in and the whole ordeal flew by quickly. I watched the Mountains of Montana turn into cold, Idaho valleys, and then eventually the Moab desert of Utah.
The plan was simple: Wake up early and crush a few climbing routes in the desert with my buddy Josh, grab some supplies, meet the team to throw back a fat meal, then get up the next day ready to crush some miles.
The Arches 50-miler is my second ultra. In fact, it was my second race ever. After failing out of my attempt at a 100-miler at mile 77 a few months back, I needed something that felt attainable. My goal was to run the desert race feeling healthy and finishing in under 10 hours. Lots of rock and sand, but at 4,000 feet of elevation gain the vertical was negligible.
Josh and I hit one of his favorite spots in Moab for three distinctly different routes. We climbed a crack that hung above the river, jamming our hands and fingers into the smallest crevices we could find and making fists as big as we could so that we could get some bite on the rock. This has always been my favorite style of climbing, and the route went up easily. After cleaning up our gear and rappelling back down to the Colorado River, we sent a playful face route with loose and shoddy gear. Josh climbed confidently and led every route without missing a beat. It was obvious he was climbing far below his capability so a novice like me could come with. The afternoon ended with a wild series of huecos, these erosion-scarred pockets that dot the mountainside like a sandy ladder, in the back of shrub-laden canyon. The climbing was incredibly satisfying, and we finished just a couple hours before the team arrived in town.
Run Club and the Start Line
20-something runners gathered around a table, all of us coming from different parts of the world. We were dirtbags and professionals, academics and blue collar folk, married, domestic and single vagabonds. One thing the running community, or the greater outdoor community I should say, is that it is unifying in every capacity. Some of us lived in our cars and some of us taught at the local university, but all of us were supportive of one another. We went around the table and all of us, your friendly neighborhood Bozeman Run Club, stated our goals and the various distances we were going to run the following day, and we all cheered and enjoyed the evening together.
There was barely a hint of light cradled among the sandy towers in the distance as all us 50-mile runners were gathered by headlamp, doing jumping jacks and anything we could to stay warm before the gun went off. I found my folks, we all wished each other best of luck, and then we stepped to the line.
The air was jovial as a mass of runners took off into the desert in a triple-file line. It was easy enough to make out the large convoy as the illuminance of our headlamps bounced up and down into the rocky horizon beyond the start line. I couldn’t make out any faces to my side as I jaunted along at a 10:30 starting pace. My hope was to hold this speed as long as I could, but the start of a race, for me, has nothing to do with pacing. I wanted to meet folks and hear their stories. Adventure sports have given people’s lives meaning where they found none. It’s brought people sobriety, given them lifelong friends and co-competitors, and brought health and wonderful memories into their lives. Adventure and adventure sports are practically all I live for anymore, and the positive impacts it has made on my life and the lives of so many people I’ve met is unfathomable. This game has never been about racing for me.
Daylight and Finding a Running Partner
I never really chatted with Evan since moving to Bozeman. As loud and eccentric as I tend to be around my close friends and online, I really can be a bit reserved in larger social situations, and he never seemed to be much of a talker during our runs with the club. I caught him shortly after taking a fall in the sand. Twelve or so miles in and I was already developing chafe from the sand in my pants and my chest was freezing after popping my water bottle. He had a laugh at me after watching me scoop frozen Gatorade-slush off my stomach and eat it out of my hand. Cold and uncomfortable isn’t an abnormal sensation for me, but sand-ladened and sticky from frozen sports drink was certainly a new one. We agreed to stick together for a few miles. He’s much faster than me on flat track, and I’m more efficient on the technical parts of the course, so we found ourselves feeding off one another, swapping leads as we moved between the winding valley floors and long stretches of road.
The course rolled on gently for quite some time. We followed this small line in the dirt up and over rocky expanses that seemed oddly uncharacteristic for the desert. Low-lying valleys filled with shrubbery and large boulders bled out into swathes of rock nearly as clean as the foundation for a building. We ascended up to the road and gazed at Arches National Park in the distance. Running directly away from the starting line meant we could track our progress throughout the day, and by the time we hit the road our start line was beginning to fall off into the distance. Massive red mesas shrunk out of view, and before we knew it Evan and I were making the final thousand feet of climbing up to the race’s halfway point.
Our gate was mixed with power hiking and jogging up to the hill’s apex, and it was at this moment we saw it all. The final 25-or-so miles directly back to the start line and our teammates. Kyla, our club director, and Kohl, one of our hammers, were the first two in our pack to finish. Evan and I debated about every half-hour whether they had already crossed the finish line or not. Later that day we would find out both of us were wrong and the duo had finished nearly a half hour faster than we anticipated (like a said, a couple of hammers).
The Back Half
The run back, although uncomfortable, was manageable enough to be enjoyed. I worked a stint as a field instructor in a wilderness therapy program, and he worked at a youth camp when he was younger. This mutual experience working with fragile young folks in wild places quickly became a powerful point of connection between us. I truly believe that some of the most immense growth in one’s EQ comes directly from attending to others’ needs and bearing witness to them overcoming their struggles. I can never undersell the positive impact that experience has made on my life.
The mileage kept shrinking. 25 miles became 20, and then the aid station left us with 15, then a final 5 push to the finish line. The end was literally in sight for miles, and as we rolled through the last technical descent of the track Evan found his stride in the final 3 miles of gravel track and left me in the dust. I believe he was just ready to be done, and I believe this because he told me so about twenty times in the last two hours. I find it almost hilarious that, although I feel I was hurting less than him, once the boulders cleared he could outrun me even as every step measured his furthest distance ever. God, folks here are fast.
I took in the final mile at a light jog, perhaps a minute slower than my regular pace. There was this intimidating feeling in my stomach that reminded me of one very painful truth; crossing that finish line meant the end of my Winter in Montana, and after having just lost my Spring job due to COVID and not getting my backup gig, it would be months before I saw these amazing people again. I reflected on the months of 5:00 AM starts up the Bridger Mountains to catch sunrise, the pitch black nights on the track training beside wonderful friends who, just a few months prior, were wonderful strangers. I thought of Yellowstone and running in the mountains on Saturdays with an amazing group of people, of my gym and the various nuts that I’d meet in the middle of the night after work trying to get stronger, of my roommates and how they were just about as absurd of human beings as I am. It all hit my chest, and I couldn’t quite place what this feeling was.
Looking back on it now I think I found community, real community. I was blessed to be surrounded by like-minded people who, for the first time in my life, were as down to hit the mountains as I was, who were as interested in conservation and mental health as I was, who shared their varied and intense passions with me and allowed me to do the same, and for a moment it felt like that was all about to disappear.
I rounded the last corner to a full team of runners cheering me into the finish line with a blanket and beer at the ready. I took one final lap to make it a 50-mile day (the course was 40.something) and embraced my teammates. We awaited our final two members at the line, welcomed them in the same and celebrated this last night we’d share together for the Winter.