When they gave us the form asking for vehicle make, model and license plate number, I had to laugh. Right — people drive here. We, on the other hand, had opted for a different route from Silverton to Telluride, starting at first light and trudging out of town on already-heavy legs.
After crossing the icy waters of Mineral Creek, we shuffled up Bear Creek Trail, where magenta fireweed gave way to scarlet paintbrush as the singletrack climbed nearly 3,500 feet into Putnam Basin. We crossed two 12,000-foot passes, slid down a thousand feet of scree, hunkered down during a thunderstorm and eventually topped out on Wasatch Pass, with Lewis Mine and Bridal Veil Basin unfurling in the mist below.
It’s not just a race. It’s a route. Running the “Softrock 100” from Silverton to Telluride
The views were spectacular. The legs were hurting. Now was the time to eat that bag of BBQ potato chips I’d been carrying since Silverton.
By the time we dropped into Telluride, we had covered roughly 30 miles and climbed more than 10,000 feet. We checked into the most expensive place I’ve ever stayed (which was also the cheapest place in town), bought a liter of Pacifico at the liquor store around the corner and plunked ourselves into the frigid waters of San Miguel River while we drank straight from the bottle. We put in a take-out order at Thai Siam 10 minutes before they closed and were eating enormous portions of fried rice and pad see ew in bed at nine.
This is why I laughed when the hotel front desk staff asked for our vehicle info.
We were two days into Softrock 100, a more relaxed approach to the Hardrock 100 ultra-marathon — if “more relaxed” means spending four days covering 100 miles and climbing roughly 33,000 feet through the San Juan Mountains. We were still doing Hardrock, but without a car, without a crew, without a race entry — and still participating in its mythology.
And apparently, this is exactly the sort of thing Dale Garland was hoping would happen.
A race as economic development
Garland, who has directed Hardrock since 1983, isn’t sure exactly who came up with the name Softrock, but he remembers liking it. When he and the small group of people who founded the Hardrock 100 launched the race in 1982, they had two ideas in mind. One was to create a running race that celebrated the San Juans — their beauty, their wildness and the toughness of the people who had worked in them. The other was more practical. Mining was disappearing from the region, and the towns that had been built around it needed another economic engine. Hardrock starts and ends in Silverton, where the last operating mine closed in 1992.
“We hoped people would go out and do the course at other times and spend some money in the communities,” Garland told me. “Part of the founding was: Let’s bring some economic development to these communities as mining is shutting down.”
At the time, ultrarunning was still small and niche. Hardrock started with 48 runners crazy enough to tackle 100 miles that crossed 13 major passes in the 12,000- to 13,000-foot range with a total of 33,000 feet of climbing — and do it in under 48 hours. Some of the early entrants weren’t even runners, Garland said, but rather experienced mountaineers who sent essays to the organizers detailing the mountain routes they’d climbed. For the first decade, anyone who signed up could participate.
That Hardrock would become a world-class event — with a highly competitive lottery, an international field and 150 elite runners traveling thousands of miles for the chance to run its punishing course each year — was never on Garland’s radar. That part came later.
As the race has evolved, so too has the Softrock 100 — the same staggeringly challenging route made “softer” by doing it over four days with overnights in hotels. This is perhaps both because of people like me, who love big days in the mountains but who don’t love to race, and because doing the Softrock has emerged as an unofficial training tool for racing the Hardrock 100. For the past three years, French ultra-runner Ludo Pommeret has traveled to the San Juans weeks before the race to backpack the Softrock at least once and usually twice. Getting to know the course at a slower pace, he’s said, has allowed him to run with confidence when things get tough during the race. Pommeret has won the past three editions of Hardrock, so naturally other racers have taken note.
“The guy who came in second this year did the same thing,” Garland said. “Tom Evans, another guy who ended up dropping out, did the same thing, he was out here six weeks early this year.”
While Garland and the Hardrock 100 staff can’t officially endorse the Softrock because of liability, “of course we’re aware of it in a wink and a nod kind of way,” he said.
While running the Hardrock 100 was never on my bucket list, doing the Softrock was near the top.
Why?
Hardrock is a race. Softrock is a route. One asks you to get around the San Juans as fast as humanly possible; the other gives you four days to make your way around the loop, fueling with gummy bears and burritos, stopping to ogle the wildflowers and, if you’re lucky, soaking in the hot springs in Ouray. It’s pretty close to what Garland and the founders of Hardrock hoped people would do all along: come to the San Juans, experience the mountains and spend a little money in the towns along the way.