Monthly Archives: August 2017

This Run the Alps guest blog post is from US trail runner Tim Tollefson. Tim is a familiar face here in the Alps. He was second in UTMB’s CCC in 2015, and third last year in the UTMB. Tim has also qualified twice for the US Olympic Marathon Trials. He’s here in Chamonix now, getting   Continue Reading →

Editor’s note: It’s UTMB season in Chamonix, and trail runners from around the world are converging on the town. One of them is Ashland, Oregon-based David Laney, a friend of several of us here at Run the Alps. In this post, David shares his thoughts about trail running in and around the Mont Blanc region.   Continue Reading →

I had been trail running for five hours. Well, the truth is, I hadn’t run much at all. While scoping out a route for a trail-running book project, I was supposed to be running, but rain, dense fog, and wind were conspiring to make the day challenging. Anticipating a thunderstorm for hours, I felt lucky   Continue Reading →

Sometimes, things just fall into place. That’s what happened this last month when Run the Alps’ friend Brian Tinder and fellow Flagstaff, Arizona runner Rob Krar announced they’d be taking part in the DDM Trail, one of the oldest trail races in the Alps. As a result, Run the Alps is able to offer a   Continue Reading →

Helmet required. It’s a phrase I had never seen when looking over the required gear list for a trail race. And it certainly piqued my interest. So, when the first edition of the Mont Blanc K2000 Skyrace in Courmayeur, Italy, debuted, I had to check it out. That was August 8, 2015, and it didn’t   Continue Reading →

Lead singer Freddie Mercury from the band Queen had a longtime connection to the Swiss town of Montreux, on the shores of Lake Geneva. The first edition of the Montreux Trail Festival kept that connection very much alive. Races were subtitled with one liners from famous Queen songs. “We will rock you” and “Another one   Continue Reading →

Every year for the past 31 years, the Montée du Nid d’Aigle (literally, the “Eagle Nest Ascent”) has started at 580 meters in Le Fayet, close to St. Gervais, and has finished at 2,400 meters at the Refuge du Nid d’Aigle. The Refuge is also the starting point for the Mont Blanc Voie Royale or   Continue Reading →

Europeans love vertical races—and the more up, the better. Steep vertical kilometer or “VK” races are commonplace. They happen throughout the year, with trail running shoes giving way to snowshoes, climbing skins and other forms of winter traction, as grassy alpine slopes turn white in the winter months. Nowhere in the Alps do they love   Continue Reading →