As Whitefish Trail Blazer Grows, So Does its Conservation Legacy

Organizers of the upcoming Whitefish Trail Blazer have plenty to celebrate as they prepare for the upcoming two-day trail-running event’s 16^th edition next month. Not only are they on track to draw the largest field of participants in race history, but they’ve got a new presenting sponsor, a rock-solid coalition of partners, a series of five races in which runners of all abilities can prove their mettle, and a conservation legacy whose roots continue to spread across the Flathead Valley.

To anyone who has watched the fall race series develop from humble beginnings in 2010 and mature alongside the local trail system it supports, its Sweet-16 celebration might seem poised to become the year the Trail Blazer finally grows up.

“This year does feel like a breakthrough, and it’s not just luck,” said Jedd Sankar-Gorton, event organizer and program director at Whitefish Legacy Partners (WLP), the nonprofit organization that oversees development and maintenance of the Whitefish Trail system. “That all these factors have come together and are moving in the right direction is proof to me that the whole conservation and recreation community recognizes the importance of the Whitefish Trail and its meaning to the future of this place.”

With more than half of the approximately 650-700 participating runners punching their Trail Blazer tickets for the first time, Sankar-Gorton and the team at WLP are capitalizing on the opportunity to share the event’s conservation story with a new and broader audience. And the most compelling way to tell that story is to show off a trail system that wouldn’t exist but for community-wide support for preserving open spaces.

“We’re putting on an event that’s a meaningful reflection of our community’s conservation values, but incorporating that story into the race is never going to be compelling in the same way that traversing the landscape itself is compelling,” Sankar-Gorton said. “For years we’ve been quietly doing the work to create these opportunities to build and maintain trails, but none of it would exist if the community didn’t make it loud and clear that this is a vital piece of where we live. The community-wide push to bring these trails together is manifested by bringing everyone together on race day.”

When WLP staff first hosted the trail race in 2010, the nascent network of single-track consisted of a 10-kilometer ribbon of dirt stretching from Beaver Lake to Lion Mountain. Even then it was designed to showcase the years of grassroots work and coalition-building that made it possible to stitch together sustainable recreation opportunities and conserve open space for the Whitefish community, threading a needle of private and public parcels to nurture the Whitefish Trail in its infancy. 

The seeds of that early vision have since grown to beanstalk proportions as Whitefish claims 47 miles of natural-surface trail radiating from 15 different trailheads peppered across town, from Haskill Basin to Beaver Lake. It’s only fitting, then, that WLP’s flagship race has grown too — from a 10-kilometer point-to-point course to a two-day trail-running extravaganza, featuring the region’s only 50-kilometer mountain ultramarathon.

Last year, the race series debuted under a rebranded name and new course format, with the Whitefish Trail Blazer 50k relocating its start and finish to Whitefish Mountain Resort instead of at Depot Park in downtown Whitefish. The course change eliminated several miles of pavement that bookended the heart of the race up and down Big Mountain. In previous years, the buzz of the event dovetailed with the Great Northwest Oktoberfest that takes place in Depot Park over two weekends.

Now, with its own unique venue, the Trail Blazer generates its own buzz.

This year’s Whitefish Trail Blazer weekend occurs Oct. 4-5 and offers five races ranging from the 50k ultramarathon to a two-mile fun run. The races are on pace to attract a field of 650 runners, according to Sankar-Gorton, who added that he’s hopeful the race series may hit 700 runners, which would be an all-time high.

The ultramarathon event has already seen a record-high number of participants, in part because of its unique and challenging mountain course. The ultramarathon begins outside Hellroaring Saloon and ascends to the summit of Big Mountain along portions of the Summit Trail, a quad-crushing 2,000-foot climb that begins right off the start line. Runners will loop over to Flower Point and descend the Danny On Trail back toward the starting line, before continuing down another 1,500 feet to the Whitefish Trail’s Reservoir Trailhead. Runners will then turn around and climb all the way back up, past the Whitefish Mountain Resort base lodge, past the finish line along Russ’s Street to the base of Chair 5 before hitting a final descent to the finish.

All told, runners will cover more than 6,300 vertical feet in just over 30 miles. Passing through the start/finish area four separate times will offer an opportunity for friends and family to maximize their spectating opportunities.

The lion’s share of credit for growing the event, Sankar-Gorton said, belongs to the landowners and land stewards who have promoted the expansion of a publicly accessible recreation trail corridor — Whitefish Mountain Resort, F.H. Stoltze Land and Lumber Company, the city of Whitefish, the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation, the U.S. Forest Service, and the philanthropists whose private parcels have, by dint of conservation easements, transformed a checkerboard of ownership into an interconnected non-motorized community trail system circumambulating Whitefish Lake.

But this year, a new presenting sponsor with an impressive race resume in its own right has stepped up to provide the Trail Blazer with an additional boost — the Flathead Running Company, the specialty running store in downtown Kalispell. The running store’s owner is Casey Jermyn, who grew up in nearby Plains before attending college at Montana State University in Bozeman. Since then, he’s spent much of his career coalescing communities around the sport of running.

Having been raised in a small town, Jermyn attributes his success as a hall-of-fame college runner (at MSU, he set a stack of enduring records in track and field and cross country) and a business owner (he established Bozeman Running Company 15 years ago) to the support he’s received from his adoptive communities.

He said the Whitefish Trail Blazer captures that same spirit of shared success.

“This event sort of embodies everything the store stands for, and as a business that’s new to the area, we’re super excited to join forces with the Trail Blazer,” Jermyn said. “We’ve been blown away by the warm welcome from the local running community and by the amazing trail-running playground you have here in your backyard, so this is a win-win for both of us.”

Before opening Bozeman Running Company, Jermyn cut his teeth as a regional sales associate for Brooks Running, the sports equipment behemoth headquartered in Seattle. To that end, he brings a high degree of business acumen and insider industry knowledge to the Trail Blazer table. And as an original sponsor of such marquee trail-racing events as Big Sky’s The Rut and the organizer behind high-profile events like the Bozeman Half Marathon and 10K, the Crosscut 20k, the Bangtail Divide 38k, and the Teton Mountain Runs, Jermyn is well versed in the art of curating successful running events.

“I think what we noticed last year, and what we started building with the rebrand, is that people are getting excited by this race because it is so distinct and because it tells such a cool story,” Sankar-Gorton said.

Along with Flathead Running Company, OrthoRehab Physical Therapy also agreed to a five-year sponsorship contract, allowing the race organization to start planning further ahead.

“Going into this year, specifically with Flathead Running Company joining on as a title sponsor and pledging five years along with OrthoRehab, it really feels like the event is moving in a sustainable direction,” Sankar-Gorton said.

Cody Moore, the race director of the Whitefish Trail Blazer, which includes the 50k ultrarunning event on Oct. 4 as well as half marathon, 10k and 5k race distances, and a 2-mile family fun run on Oct. 5, said he’s noticed a higher degree of enthusiasm this year. That’s owing in part to the training series he’s been leading in the weeks leading up to the event.

“The Trail Blazer training runs have been an opportunity to connect folks using the Whitefish Trail and preparing for the race, preview sections of the course, and learn from our partners,” Moore said. “We had over 25 different individuals come out and join the training series this year in preparation for race day.”

Sankar-Gorton recently kicked off one of those training sessions by telling participants about the history of the Whitefish Trail and the conservation easements that have guarded against private development in some of the region’s most cherished spaces for recreation.

“A big part of what we do at Whitefish Legacy Partners is share the conservation lesson behind these events, and it feels like we’ve never had a more receptive audience than right now,” he said.

The master plan for the Whitefish Legacy Partners is to “close the loop” around Whitefish Lake, ultimately allowing recreational users to connect more than 55 miles of trail that includes a section from Smith Lake to the summit of Big Mountain. Last year, through a partnership between the Flathead National Forest, Flathead Area Mountain Bikers (FAMB), WLP and Whitefish Mountain Resort began, trail work in the Taylor Hellroaring Project adjacent to the resort began, with plans to which will add more than 20 miles of non-motorized trails connecting Haskill Basin to Werner Peak in the Whitefish Range.

The future trails in the area could offer even more possibilities for the WLP to alter the Whitefish Trail Blazer 50k course, or feature options for even longer distances in the future. But this year, the goal is to continue building excitement for the homegrown community event.

“There are lots of cool runs and races in the West, but this one specifically is about more than just your finishing time,” Sankar-Gorton said. “It’s not just something that you sign up for and forget; there’s some meat to this and we want people to enjoy it on a higher level. We want to remind people what we’ve accomplished here, and this race helps shine a light on that conservation success story.”

For more information about the Whitefish Trail Blazer and to sign up for the races, visit the website here.

[email protected]