A few months ago when we were working on bringing the Skyrunner World Series to Beast of Big Creek the team approached me suggesting I’d add SWS sponsor RECCO reflectors as mandatory equipment requirement. Back then I declined, thinking of the added cost to every runner, the fact that Mount Ellinor isn’t really “hard and remote” environment, and most of all that the current network wasn’t really covering the Olympic Mountains.

Given the recent news around Kalie McCrystal my thoughts about this have very much changed. Somehow the individual reflector isn’t stocked at REI, which feels like a massive oversight, but you can yours on Amazon – where I ordered mine this morning. And you should too.

From their press announcement:

AllTrails and REI Co-op today announced a multi-year partnership designed to help people discover trails, plan adventures, and spend more time outside. By bringing together AllTrails’ and REI’s member communities, the partnership makes it easier to explore the outdoors while fostering a connection with nature and taking care of public lands.

Smart partnership.

From Kalie’s family, shared by Hilary Gerardi:

It has been two weeks since our dearest Kalie went missing during a reconnaissance on the Matterhorn. Since then, the Guardia di Finanza mountain rescue team has worked tirelessly to explore every possible avenue at their disposal. They have been unwavering in their professionalism, kindness, and commitment to finding Kalie. As a family, it has meant a great deal to us throughout the search to know that everything that could be done was being done. We are eternally grateful to them. We also wish to extend our gratitude to the RCMP and the Canadian Embassy for their support and assistance during this time.

The outpouring of love and support for Kalie has been nothing short of incredible. The constant support of Hillary Gerardi, who first raised the alarm about Kalie, has been indispensable to us. Friends and loved ones from around the world mobilised and went to remarkable lengths to help find her and bring her home. How beautiful it has been to witness the love that surrounded her.

The Matterhorn is as majestic as it is unforgiving. Despite Kalie’s exceptional skill and experience in technical mountain terrain, including her previous experience on the Matterhorn itself, everything we now know suggests she fell while descending.

Despite the efforts of so many over the past weeks, the search has not led us to Kalie. This is not the outcome any of us had hoped for, and it is very difficult to accept.

Kalie was an incredibly special person. She moved through life with equal parts determination and fun. Her absence will undoubtedly leave a huge hole in the communities she was so invested in, across Skyrunning, Squamish and beyond.

For our family, things will never be the same again. Kalie meant so much to us as a sister and daughter, and the loss of her is something we will carry with us forever.

While we desperately wish we could have found her, we find peace in knowing that she was doing what made her feel most alive until her very last moments, and that she remains among the mountains where she felt most at home.

Wendy Cooper & Jody McCrystal
Kalie’s Mum & Sister

I had met Kalie just a few weeks prior at Beast of Big Creek. This one hits very close to home. Everyone here at our Rock Candy is thinking of Kalie and her family in this moment.

The Cirque Series is landing back in the PNW this coming weekend – September 19th – close to Mount Rainier for their eighth race of the season.

I just received word that the Cirque team is still looking for a few volunteers for the event. If you got time, and are looking to snag a free race entry for next year email Steve.

From the official press release:

Crystal Palace Football Club are delighted to announce a new multi-year partnership with Brooks Running, who will become the Club’s Official Footwear Partner across both the men’s and women’s first teams.

Crystal Palace FC is an English Premiere League soccer/football team, for those unfamiliar. This is a big deal, wow.

Dakota Jones with yet another banger of a blog post and a response to Ben Dhiman’s race report of his win at UTMB this year:

…it seems a little rich for Ben Dhiman to suggest that he’s the first person ever to try to run fast at UTMB.

And further:

… don’t patronize me man. The problem with Ben’s statement is not that it’s false. It’s that Ben doesn’t seem to realize there might be other reasons for running a race than simply winning.

Dakota is as eloquent as ever and tries to be fair to Ben here. He closes bringing his response to the heart of what trail running should be all about:

I want to look to leaders who can figure out how to compete for the win and simultaneously be inclusive of the sport as a whole. Do their successes include others? We’re not in the stone age because we haven’t been running fast enough. We’re here because we’re specializing the sport toward exclusive, elite outcomes. True innovation will include everyone.

This is trail running.

Co-owner Zach Hauer shares his business’s numbers from these last few month in a refreshingly honest blog post:

I imagine that anyone reading this who has a lick of business acumen is probably yelling at the screen because you’ve identified a dozen areas of opportunity for us to work on.
…
Much like in sport, success is best achieved with consistency over multiple cycles. You build towards a goal, hit that goal, take time to recover, and then apply what you’ve learned to your next build.

And much like in sports folks need cheerleaders and supporters in their corner. I for one am here for this openness.

Ken Seals, creator of The Ultra Minute with this fascinating editorial project covering Meg Eckert’s astonishing run and new world record (pending verification):

Eckert won the EMU Six-Day Race, this year’s GOMU world championship, ahead of every other runner, man or woman. She covered 1,024.319 kilometers. She broke her own women’s world record and Joe Fejes’ American record, set in 2015.
…
We wanted a closer look, so we used the official lap data to explore her six days and nights: the pace, the pauses, and the same loop, more than a thousand times.

This project reminds me a bit of the NYT’s ‘Snowfall’ from a few years ago. Really well done.

Jonathan Turner for Tri247:

Salomon will become the title partner of the IRONMAN World Championship in Kona from 2027 after agreeing a major five-year global deal with The IRONMAN Group.

The agreement will put the name of a brand traditionally associated with skiing, mountain sport and trail running on triathlon’s biggest annual event through to 2031.

Salomon is looking for new territory to cover and the next growth market opportunity. Their sponsorship of the Milano/Cortina Winter Olympics showed their ambition to get into these type of sports – more urban structure, less adventurous mountain trail. Their announcement and hype video makes me a bit sad though, using the incredible clips from the Alps, UTMB, Hardrock and others to promote pounding pavement to run an Ironman just doesn’t sit right with me. We shall see where this goes.

Coming up this weekend is the first Skyrunner USA National Series Finale in a very long time. Marathon Sport’s Kismet Cliff Run is happening in the White Mountains around Conway, New Hampshire. From Ryan Kerrigan in the US Skyrunning newsletter:

We’re so grateful to have a series back in the US. It feels like skyrunning has finally found a foothold. While skyrunning has always had a dedicated US audience, these runners have felt a bit like lone wolves trying to claw their way into the world circuits with little support. It’s a big mountain to climb still but we’re already feeling an uptick in interest for future races and skyrunning in general. Thanks to dedicated, tireless and amazing race directors skyrunning has a home again.

$20,000 in prize money are on the line. Kismet race director Tom Hooper shares:

Marathon Sports and the Kismet Cliff Run crew are super excited to be part of the US Skyrunning National Series. We are happy to share the beauty and ruggedness of the New Hampshire White Mountains with the participants. We hope this is just the start for the Merrell SkyRunner® US Series, and we would like to see it continue to grow for years to come.

Winner of Beast of Big Creek‘s men’s race Morgan Elliot will be on the line as well as 4th and 7th place finisher of the women’s race Carmen Graves and Robin Vieira Brower.

Doug Mayer follows up his articles sharing the views of the Mayor of Chamonix in Trailrunner with a conversation post-event. Three things seem to be the main concern:

Leading up to the race, Laffin put his concerns around UTMB in three buckets: the race itself, the brands that organize activations, and crowds.

And speaking of brands:

“A vending machine was flown to a refuge in the mountains,” Laffin points out. “That’s unacceptable. Another brand was on the vertical kilometer without asking for authorization. Some brands have an approach where they think they can do whatever they want.”

Hmmmm… both “activations” were done by Nike ACG. Unless there was another brand hosting an event on the vertical kilometer. Curious that neither the mayor nor Mayer (ha!) choose to mention the brand by name. Several other brands are called out in the article. No mention of Nike/ACG.

I’m just gonna add a side note here: Can you imagine what it would look like if Red Bull would get interested in the sport of trail running? Like for real?

DC Rainmaker with the story:

“This is not a race”- That’s the (repeated) words of the announcer at last night’s running event at Apple Campus. And I suspect those same words might have been spoken five months ago on April 1st, 2026, when a bunch of runners gathered for a 50KM event around the famed Apple campus loop (often called ‘The Spaceship’).

Hilarious and fascinating event running loops around the Apple Campus in Cupertino.

Perfect timing for this story as Apple announced new phones and watches today.

Via CBC:

Kalie McCrystal, an elite mountain athlete from Squamish, was last seen on Sept. 1 above the mountain’s Jean-Antoine Carrel hut, located at an altitude of roughly 3,830 metres.

Search and rescue crews were mobilized to find her, but recently declared they would suspend the helicopter operations after a full day of aerial searches on Thursday turned up no trace.

Kalie McCrystal came in 5th at Beast of Big Creek last month, and is currently fifth overall in the Skyrunner World Series rankings. This one hits especially hard.

Antonin Cotte a French strategist in sport & entertainment writes on LinkedIn in a length blog post titled “UTMB has a problem that money cannot solve.” (auto-translated):

The UTMB is no longer merely a race with sponsors; it is a group whose business is selling access—access to a legendary starting line, access to a captive audience for brands, and access to licensing rights for local organizers worldwide. This model has enabled the group to multiply its revenue and build a circuit of 65 events in just a few years.

However, a model based on the scarcity of a unique location (the Chamonix Valley) carries within it an inherent limit to growth. Unlike acquiring a studio or forming a technology partnership, this ceiling cannot be overcome with a check; it requires negotiation with local officials, whose patience—unlike the group’s revenue—does not grow by 15% annually.

The question facing UTMB Group in the coming years is therefore no longer whether the demand exists—for it clearly does, and in abundance. Rather, the question is whether a business model built on continuous expansion can survive in a territory that, for the first time in twenty years, is clearly telling it that it has reached its limit.

Clearly this issue isn’t going away for UTMB and Antonin makes a good point. UTMB, while still majority owned by the Poletti family is more now part of a bigger private equity play as Matt Trappe puts it in his blog post from today (which I get to later):

Advance Publications (and its private equity partner Okila Capital) ultimately own 45% of UTMB – a technical minority but a lot. Advance is privately held and also owns Condé Nast (think Vogue, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker). Advance/Okila bought Ironman in 2020.

So, while the Polettis still have a lot of pull in the valley they also have to answer for that bigger monstrosity behind it that’s forcing the revenue acceleration. Or better: Okila Capital can’t be hiding behind the Polettis while strip mining the Chamonix Valley. That much is clear.

But the piece that I see missing in this cry about the beloved Chamonix Valley is the reality that the valleys in the Alps are built on tourism and regular sporting events. Chamonix hosted the first Winter Olympics! How many climbing competitions, skiing events, and other activities are annually in Chamonix and the surrounding area? And, this is not me being facetious, I genuinely don’t know. Are we at a place with trail running that a UTMB event is already bigger than the Ski World Cup? Maybe these competition travel more and aren’t in the same valley every year? Maybe skiing really is already dwarfed by trail running – but if so, that would be big news, in my opinion.

Quick check on the calendar for Chamonix for the winter of 2027:

• Alpine World Cup – slalom, women on January 8–9
• Alpine World Cup – slalom, men on January 30

BTW, Audi is the title sponsor for the Alpine World Cup. Azerbaijan, the country is the “Global Destination Partner”. Do you think there are any environmental concern that are being talked about for this tour?

Where’s the Mont-Blanc Marathon in all this?

Seems that an event with just as many runners on the trails of the Chamonix valley does not pose the same problems for the locals. So why the call to reduce the “number of participants” for UTMB? Is it because:

Mont Blanc Marathon is a trail running event organized by the Club des Sports de Chamonix, a nonprofit organization founded in 1905.

Which is a total fair differentiator, in my book. Or is it that when voices call for a “reduction of UTMB” they really are calling for a curbing of the brand activations alongside the actual races? We shall see.

I really wasn’t going to write about Brian Metzler’s article in Trailrunner about Gary Cantrell “Laz” visiting Chamonix during UTMB week. But, after Trailrunner promoted the article on Instagram with the tagline “Gary “Lazarus Lake” Cantrell Came to UTMB. He May Know How to Save It.” I thought, hey, I am rage baited, let’s go.

Here it goes

• Laz. How many films do we need? What new nugget of new information can there be shown? Yes, he’s an attractive figure to cover. But man, are there no others that would deserve a biopic?
• Laz and the Barkley phenomenon is a huge deal in France. In fact I would wager most books/films about Laz/Barkley are driven by French media publishers and interest. They love Barkley as much as Brice from Satisfy loves cowboy culture.
• I’m sure Laz didn’t ask for a meeting with the mayor of Chamonix, the article for that matter. He’s just a pawn in this self promotion game by everyone around him.
• Trailrunner posted 36 articles about UTMB in past four weeks (and counting). They are firing on all cylinders over there. I bet this is the only international running event that receive that much attention from Outside.
• Brian Metzler wrote the article and published it on Trailrunner. Not on Trailhead Media by UltraSignup where he’s currently the Director of Media and Content. Brian was the founding editor of Trailrunner magazine and was let go/left during Outside CEO’s Robin Thurston’s wonderful pivot to software as a who-knows-what. Brian hasn’t published an article there since November 2024. I am told this is a one off. And it somewhat makes sense for it to go there. UltraSignup News isn’t the right fit for UTMB content – USU doesn’t get registration fees from their races after all.
• Back to the article. In it, Laz doesn’t actually claim that he knows how to Save UTMB in Chamonix. The article largely follow Laz for a day as he wanders around Chamonix, meets with people is gracious and grumpy, he’s Laz.
• And finally to the tagline: Could you imagine the collective conniption by the America trail media if someone wrote a headline that said “Catherine Poletti knows how to save Western States and/or Hardrock”? Or even better: “UTMB has ideas how to fix American trail culture.” And don’t get me wrong here, I am not laying this at the feet of Laz or Brian. My guess is that this tagline is someone’s doing in the editorial team looking for clicks.

American media reaps the benefits of publishing in English. Therefore, by default and not because they’ve earned it, they are reaching a much larger audience than just their regional language silo. That’s something folks in Europe struggle with as their trail media often stays regional due to the language barrier. I don’t know what Trailrunner’s ambition is. By covering an international event I would wager though that they are interested in reaching an audience that’s more than just their regional/national readers. But these sort of headlines/taglines – and the attitude behind it – is exactly why the rest of the world shakes their head at Americans and how they present themselves to them. Especially in times like these – hello Lake Ontario! – a bit of respect and courtesy would go a long way.

Bonus:

In today’s UTMB article (Updated my number of how many UTMB related articles Trailrunner posted!) titled “How to Recover From UTMB (Even if You Didn’t Race)” we get the following sentence:

Are you experiencing less content of Ben Dhiman’s dominance, Lauren Gregory’s grit, or Blandine L’Hirondel’s bawling?

Why do we give the American winners positive nouns “dominance” and “grit” while the French winner of UTMB is just “bawling”?

This is so embarrassing.

Canadian Running not burying the lede:

The case is closed

And followed up with the full details (you can just read the glee in their voices when they wrote this):

Judge Rosemary Marquez of the District Court for the District of Arizona granted the company’s motion to dismiss the suit, on the grounds that the court has no jurisdiction to hear the case in Arizona, since the company does not have business there.  

This was only the first of several lines of defence brought by the company; the judge did not consider the others, which included, among other things, that the allegations in the article are true (and therefore not libellous), and that the suit violates Arizona’s anti-SLAPP legislation (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation), which protects free speech.

For any folks who love being rule followers by nature this should come as no surprise – there was never a case to begin with.

Speaking of AI, Adam Robinson reports for the local ABC affiliate in Sisikiyou County, CA:

One climber had used the AllTrails phone app during the climb up the mountain, but the phone battery died. A backup battery charger did not work, the USFS said. The group mostly relied on sight while descending, though one climber had a Garmin watch.

The USFS said the climbers told them they had used an artificial intelligence platform, YouTube videos and AllTrails to plan the trip. They said they relied on AI to decide what food to bring and how much food and water they would need.

I want to write a snarky comment here, but what is there left to say?

LiveTrail sent out an email today alerting it’s users of unauthorized access to their servers:

In a context of increasing cyberattacks, we are writing to inform you of a security incident that affected LiveTrail and certain data associated with your account.

The app has been around since 2023 and bills itself as a race companion and tracking app. It’s privately co-owned by Isabelle Viseux Poletti, daughter of Catherine and Michel Poletti. As a result of this close connection the app is mandatory for all UTMB runners and used heavily, but not exclusively, at many of the UTMB World Series events.

Since I’m a general AI hater I’m just gonna go out on a limb and suggest that this breach was because they used AI to develop the V3 version of their app. Again, I have no idea if any of this is true. Just before UTMB Finals week, the team did just release an updated version of the interface, which also enhanced the UTMB Live interface with several features.

The UTMB website has the new race listed on their website’s event drop down overlay thingy, but the link to the actual subdomain is currently still password protected. The event will be called: ‘Jujuy Fuerza Sagrada‘ and is, according to the thumbnail, scheduled for 1-4 April, 2027. There’s also a hype video on YouTube that’s currently set to private.

Once officially confirmed I’ll add the event to the ECC UTMB World Series Calendar.

It seems that the trail media is back on board, and so are the main voices and talking heads of our sport. After several years of calling for boycotts and complaints about various decisions UTMB made, this year felt like a sea change. There were no asterisks, no snarky side tones, no whiney blog posts, podcasts, or lengthy Instagram posts complaining about cheese and other cultural misunderstandings¹. And those few and far between seemed to have been grasping for straws and fishing for clout. The athletes are all back in town, and so are the influencers². The brands never left and doubled down this year. And if there’s one thing people had to quibbled with it’s the over saturation of brand presences in the valley. Everyone wants to outdo the other and hopes for a bit of the shine of the valley rubbing off on them. But as it comes to UTMB the storylines are all largely positive. Folks expressed their excitement to have spend some time in the shadows of Mont Blanc. No one mentioned Ironman all week long. Everyone of name wanted to be there, or kept it to themselves if their brand forced them anyways – maybe the paychecks increased?

UTMB has won

Yes, there is that story about the mayor of Chamonix, but this is about local politics and doesn’t affect our sport. Well, maybe the outcome of it will, but I am confident that the team around Catherine and Michel Poletti are confident that they are able to come to an amicable solution for all parties – they live in town after all and want to show their face at the local boulangerie on the weekends. This is also an issue one can resolve sitting around a table and not one being discussed on social media – which is a huge bonus.

Michel won too

And to show just how confident UTMB is in their position, Michel Poletti ran the full UTMB loop around Mont Blanc again, in his 70s, and finishing it in 1,578th place, winning is age group in 44:58:26. (This was his tenth attempt and after DNF’ing in 2023 and 2025 he finished it again – congrats!) What a way to say: this is our race and this is our home. We’re real trail runners and we’re here to stay.

__________

1 Maybe it helped that American runners stood on a lot of podiums. This gave the mostly American media lots to cheer for and not look for answers excuses on why their runners didn’t do better – was it the Sodastream cola?

2 Several of the influencers and media writers were trying to sounds more level-headed in their brand sponsored write-ups about their UTMB visit by parroting the mayor’s concern about overcrowding in the valley – but they themselves were there for the brands, and the activations, and the parties – and not the actual races. So they themselves are in the perfect position to fix their own problem.