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Indisputably, Chamonix’s best-known trail running weekend comes at the close of August, with the start of the Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc. But, earlier in the summer, there’s a lesser-known event that bring tens of thousands of runners, friends, and family to town: The Chamonix Mount-Blanc Marathon races. Together with UTMB, the events form bookends for summer

Writer Sandy Stott will be joining Run the Alps on a trail running trip around Mont Blanc next month. He lives in Brunswick, Maine. Read the first and second installments of his account as he trains for the circumnavigation along the Tour du Mont Blanc. The maps, when you stand on them, are big enough to

When I wrote about the upcoming trail race season for Run the Alps back in January 2016, I came across a number of new events, including Il Cuors da Flem. Located in Flims, within the Swiss canton of Graubünden, the race name means “The Run of Flims” in Romansh, Switzerland’s fourth national language. The photos of

Who you pick, and who picks you, says a lot about a company. We’re pleased to be partners with some of the greatest folks in the trail running community. They include Dan and Janine Patitucci, of PatitucciPhoto. Ibex, for our clothing. Patagonia, for our client gear. ALPSinsight, for sharing trail running opportunities in Switzerland’s Jungfrau region.

I have a serious soft spot in my heart for crazy trail running ideas: the self-created adventures, the offbeat concepts, the way-out-of-the-mainstream mountain runs that have you shaking your head in a combination of admiration and shock, thinking “Who dreamed up that idea—and how many beers had they had–when they did?” So, when Salomon team member Rickey Gates mentioned an Alp town

Though the snowpack is still holding its own up high, not all Run the Alps participants are willing to sit back and wait for winter to fade from the alpine zone. Ray Sena, of San Leandro, California, has already returned from his trail running adventure in the Alps. Ray spent a week on a self-guided

Smitten with rock. Let’s begin there, and already you may be saying, “This guy is odd, or hard up,” and that may be true. But it is really a softness of heart for the slow, foot-won world that has me writing this. Which is really a way of calling back some moments on The Dome

All of this is prospective. I’ve signed on to Run the Alps’ Tour of Mont Blanc, and I’ll know exactly what that means once I arrive in Chamonix, and the mountains fill my eyes. But even these many weeks before that arrival, a lot of my limited memory-Ks are taken up by imagined Alps and

This article originally appeared in The American Trail Running Association‘s (ATRA) newsletter, Trail Times, in April 2016. Run the Alps is a corporate member of ATRA, whose mission is to represent and promote mountain, ultra, and trail running in the United States. Run the Alps encourages you to join ATRA and support trail running across the US. Here’s

I’ve heard of a lot of downright twisted trail races over the years. There’s Mount Marathon in Seward, Alaska. (Check out this rather intense video of the race.) There’s Fully, Switzerland’s Vertical KM, considered one of the steepest, most direct vertical races the world. Nearby Leukerbad has its quirky thermal sprint. There are plenty of others. And then