
Trail Running Stories

The Red Desert in southwest Wyoming is the largest unfenced area in the continental United States. In order to raise awareness about this threatened ecosystem, several Wyoming conservation groups have banded together to organize a trail race that brings runners, local stakeholders, and concerned citizens together to experience this place and see exactly what is at stake.

A runner explores what it takes to find quiet in the world, and in our minds.

Reflections on the 2022 Oak Flat Prayer Run, a gathering and a protest of a planned copper mine that could destroy this sacred site.

Lydia Jennings honors Indigenous scientists of the past, present and future.

Un intento de establecer el menor tiempo conocido para los 296 kilómetros del sendero hacia la fuente del río Támesis.

Martin Johnson se embarca en su carrera más desafiante, cuando decide explorar la conexión entre la historia de las personas negras en Inglaterra y el río Támesis.

How the trails beneath our feet help us belong.

Las comunidades del Cajón del Maipo, en Chile, ven su entorno amenazado por un proyecto innecesario.

El trail runner y activista, Felipe Cancino, nos lleva en un recorrido de 120 km a través del Maipo—revelando en el camino los impactos que el proyecto hidroeléctrico Alto Maipo sobre el ecosistema local, sus comunidades y tradiciones, así como las amenazas que supone para el suministro de agua de los 7.1 millones de habitantes de Santiago.

Exploring one of the least visited but most revisited national parks, on foot.

After a difficult year, a runner finds life anew in the Sierra.

Ahí donde termina un camino de tierra es donde comienza un nuevo desafío, una lucha por la protección del Yosemite de Sudamérica.

Running through the most-visited wilderness in the continental United States, rallying to its defense.

A trail running race in southwest Wyoming brings attention to the importance of protecting the largest unfenced area in the contiguous United States.

El FKT de Luke Nelson en el Wasatch Ultimate Ridge Linkup.

Explorando a pie las tierras públicas de Sudamérica.

Zumbando a través de la Sierra High Route.


Krissy Moehl reports from the 2019 inaugural takayna ultramarathon “There are no footprints.” Fellow Patagonia ambassador and New Zealand native Grant Guise voiced what I was thinking. Our headlamps and phone lights dimly illuminated the overgrown double-track from Rebecca Road. “If 100 people are starting a race in five minutes, we would see footprints,” he…

Steve House joins forces with coach Scott Johnston and athlete Kílian Jornet to develop a comprehensive approach to finding the joy and the payoff of intense training. Even lunges.

Patagonia is thrilled to publish Steve House and Scott Johnston’s second training book, Training for the Uphill Athlete, for which they teamed up with world-class endurance athlete Kílian Jornet. This is an excerpt from the book, now available in Patagonia stores, on Patagonia.com, and at your favorite bookstore or online distributor. I race a lot:…

For the slo-mo, bug-bitten, exhausted joy of really long runs. Time expands and compresses on long runs. Moments of navigation or extended discomfort can seem endless, while the landscape sifts by like a slow-moving picture. And then suddenly it’s been hours that slipped by without you noticing, except for the subtle changes in light and…

Some families share religion, camping, lavish vacations, opera. Other families go running.

On clear days in the Pacific Northwest, views of Mount Baker depend on the marine layer and the storms. The 10,781-foot snowcapped dome is often obscured by the shifting weather, and though I’d grown up looking at the mountain, I didn’t see it much this year. But when Jeremy Wolf emailed me about running to…

Groggily I stirred in the sweaty musk of my sleeping bag. I’d spent the night on the hard concrete slab directly outside the Independence campground’s pit toilets, with the wafting stench of shit enveloping my fitful slumber. I shut my eyes, trying to forget where I was. My hips were sore, my kidneys ached and…

It starts with the focal beam of a headlamp. Sunrise is more than an hour away and it’s pouring rain. Hands tucked into the sleeves of a jacket, and the pace already quick through the sharp Tasmanian buttongrass—trying to stay warm. There is an urgency to understand this threatened place, to know takayna / Tarkine as…

The map showed an unbroken line contoured to the ridge. We started running along that line and ran past its end, into a space between two worlds. A few orange ribbons hung on branches in natural openings, marking what might eventually be the beginning of a trail. We followed it. When a gravel slope appeared…

As we sat on the tailgate of the truck, our frozen breath swirling under the light of a headlamp, we heard the first distant thud of rubber on dirt. The approaching runner was still a mile away, but you can hear just about anything that happens in the dense stillness of 2 a.m. in the…

It started on a hot afternoon in May, deep in Bears Ears National Monument. Four of us had been going hard for a couple of days and the fatigue from difficult miles was stacking up. One of us was struggling. It might have been lack of training, or perhaps improper fueling for back-to-back 12-hour days…

“We just have to run 20, 30 or 50 miles a day over some mountains. What could go wrong?” When I received my itinerary from Jenn Shelton to run the Tour du Mont Blanc, I took a hard swallow of quickly drying saliva, knowing that my background as a middle-distance track racer (specializing in the 5K)…