I’ve lived in Salt Lake City now for just over a year. I was first called to the Wasatch Mountains a few winters ago to experience the greatest snow on earth. After spending several weeks in Salt Lake City during the record-breaking 2023 winter, where almost every day was a powder day, I knew I had to move here full-time. While skiing brought me to Salt Lake, it has been trail running that has kept me here.
I remember first hearing about Running Up For Air (RUFA) last winter when a few of the folks I ran with participated in the event. Running for 24 hours through the night in the middle of winter, no thanks. I didn’t understand the appeal of a race where you went up and down a mountain over and over again in the snow. As the winter progressed, however, my view shifted. The inversion, where polluted air is trapped in the valley of Salt Lake City, is worst during the winter months, and every time I would summit a mountain, the city would be obscured by a blanket of smog.
RUFA is more than a race, it is a movement for clean air. I read more about the origins of the event and how it was started to raise awareness of the air quality in Salt Lake City and to raise funds for nonprofits doing crucial environmental work. This gave me a new appreciation of the event, and running up and down a mountain in the middle of winter no longer seemed so crazy. Actually, it still seemed crazy, but the right kind of crazy to draw attention to the critical issue of air quality in the area. What better way to raise awareness than running extreme distances in extreme weather? I was sold, I knew I needed to sign up for the next RUFA and raise funds to help organizations working on air quality in the area I now call home.
This year, I registered for the 12-hour Grandeur Peak RUFA event. I figured 12 hours was enough time for me to understand the experience without burning out and never wanting to run again. Training for a running event during the winter was not something I was used to, but I figured that backcountry skiing would translate well into the consistent uphill hike technique needed to summit Grandeur over and over. My training consisted of summiting Grandeur Peak on a few different training runs to get a lay of the mountain. A week before the race, I found out we would be running up the Church Fork route instead of the West Face route I had been practicing on. Any strategy that I might have had shifted to “lock into a podcast and keep the feet moving.”
Race day arrived with mixed reports on the weather conditions and speculation that the trails would be a mess. Thankfully, the mountains received a few inches of fresh snow to pack the trails and made for perfect snow-running conditions. I drove up to the start line in the electric shuttle bus and ran into two friends who were 10 hours into the overnight 12-hour event and about to head out for a final lap. The race had clearly taken a toll on them. Seeing the tattered state they were in was like looking into my future 10 hours, not helpful.
The race started, and off everyone went! Some fast out the gate, and others content to walk the entire time. I ran with a group of folks for the first two laps and then it was a lot of solo time. The energy was high with people constantly passing each other and words of encouragement exchanged. Up and down the mountain, and then up again. Entering the aid station tent at the bottom was always the best part, as there were hot pirogues, quesadillas, and water, but also the worst part, as it meant another 2,700 feet to climb yet again.
At the end of the day I was depleted, yet so full. Depleted of all energy from having run 7 laps, but full of the positive vibes of the trail community who had shown up in support of clean air. There are many overwhelming problems out there, poor air quality being one of them. They won’t be solved by just running, but in this moment, at the end of RUFA, I saw the power that a community coming together to run could have.
As snow started to fall, I gathered my possessions, gracefully declined the offer of a pickle beer, and boarded the bus down to the valley.
See you next year 24 hours!
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