12 minute read
Taking the Trail Less Traveled
PHOTO BY CODY LIND
Three Idaho women smashing records and taking outdoor recreation to a new level.
BY MICAH DREW
Terri Rowe has a thing for lists. More accurately, she has a thing for checking off lists. Not just any lists though—she prefers very niche lists of tall mountains.
Rowe, 60, is a high pointer, someone whose proclivity toward recreation and the outdoors is driven by seeking out the highest points of land around her. “I was at a point in my life trying to figure out my midlife crisis since my daughters were growing up,” Rowe said. “I was trying to find my way, and I guess I came across high pointing and thought ‘perfect, this is what I want to do.’”
Terri Rowe flexing on top of Thompson Peak, the high point of the Sawtooth Ranch and Sawtooth Wilderness.
PHOTO BY PAUL JURCZAK
Rowe first saw the phrase in a logbook on top of a mountain she had hiked. Not within her lexicon, she Googled the phrase and entered the world of the mildly obsessed.
High pointing is a tracked mountaineering goal, or series of goals. The most common form of high pointing is state high pointing, where hikers and mountaineers tag the tallest peak in each of the 50 states, or at least the lower 48. Some, like Denali or Mt. Rainier, are daunting. Others, like Florida’s Britton Hill are the equivalent of strolling across an interstate overpass.
Rowe knocked off the contiguous state high points relatively quickly. Then she did them all again with her daughter, the first mother-daughter team to finish it. “I needed to limit myself to just Idaho after traveling around the country twice,” she said. “I figured if each state has a high point, then each county must too.”
Idaho’s 44 counties were quickly checked off her list too.
Rowe hiking up to Thompson Peak in the Sawtooths.
PHOTO BY PAUL JURCZAK
One of the main websites that tracks high pointing is Peakbagger. com, allowing climbers to log every mountain they visit. If you enter a summit, the site will tell you what kind of lists that mountain appears on—and they get very, very specific. Mt. Borah, for example, is on several dozen lists—U.S. peaks with 6,000 feet of prominence, peaks with at least 5,000 feet of vertical gain, Idaho peaks with 25 miles of isolation, etc.
“There’s 16 peaks on the isolation list and I realized I’d already done 14 of them, so then I just looked up which ones I had left,” Rowe said. “Then I needed to go.”
Rowe readily admits that peakbagging is quite competitive. Even among her main hiking companions, there’s competition depending on who’s working on which lists, but Rowe can normally rest easily—no one else in Idaho is close to her accomplishments.
Recently, Rowe pursued the high points in each of Idaho’s 14 wilderness areas, six of which are in the Owyhee mountains in the southwest corner of the state. “This is what’s so cool about highpointing or peakbagging—it takes you to places you wouldn’t normally go. That’s what I really love about it—I love going places I’ve never been, I love seeing things the average person has never seen,” she said. “When I think of the Owyhees, I think about these deep gorges with rocky cliffs surrounding the sides of the river, well, that’s not high pointing.”
The final wilderness high point to check off was Big Cinder Butte in Craters of the Moon. In August, Rowe became the first person to finish that list. Now, she’s chiseling away at a few other lists—the highest point in each of Idaho’s roughly 60 mountain ranges, the most prominent point in each county, and all of Idaho’s mountains over 11,000 feet. “There’s over 100 of those, and I am certainly getting older,” Rowe said. “Some might be out of my league already.”
That’s not going to slow Rowe down in the slightest, though.
“There’s still things you can do when you get older. It doesn’t have to be ultra-long, it doesn’t have to be the fastest known time. You can still do these things,” she said. “Usually with big feats like this, there’s a record, and there’s a man involved. I say hey, women can do this too! And even if I’m not breaking records, I love it.”
THE ULTIMATE LINK UP
Since 2014, professional trail runner Brittany Peterson has only finished outside the top six in a competition twice. In 2021, the Nike-sponsored athlete finished second at the Western States Endurance Run, a 100-mile run in California, which is widely considered the Super Bowl equivalent of the endurance sport.
While racing is a big part of being a competitive ultra-runner, it’s not everything. Having world class mountain fitness unlocks the ability to do things in the backcountry that even seasoned recreationists can only dream of—like linking together Idaho’s highest peaks in just over a day’s time.
The Idaho 12ers is a collection of the nine tallest summits in the state over 12,000 feet. The list includes Hyndman Peak in the Pioneers, Diamond Peak in the Lemhi Range, and a string of seven peaks in the Lost River Range that can be conquered together with a precise route that can only be unlocked by those who have spent years poking around the gullies and cliff bands guarding the summits.
There’s an active list of people who have summited all of the 12ers—276 as of this publication—but rarely does anyone string them together in one push.
In 2016, Peterson did just that with her partner Cody Lind, also a professional trail runner, and Nate Bender of Missoula.
With Lind’s father, Paul, helping crew them (driving them between trailheads, helping refuel, and guiding them through some obscure routes from a spotting scope and radio), the trio finished the route in less than 38 hours, with Peterson marking the fastest time recorded by a woman, officially a Fastest Known Time (FKT).
Brittany Peterson works her way up another of the Idaho 12ers.
PHOTO BY CODY LIND
But with the Lost River Range as her home training ground, Peterson wanted to go faster. “I wanted my name on the list as the top female, solo, not just with the group,” Peterson said. “The interesting thing is last summer, and the summer before, it was on my radar to check off, but I wasn’t motivated to do it.”
This summer, the motivation showed up. “Being in the mountains was my happy place, so I was ready to pull the trigger and get it done,” she said. “Everything just clicked.”
Sandwiched between Western States and the Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc—two of the most prestigious, difficult, and competitive ultra distance trail races in the world—Peterson found a free weekend on the calendar.
“You have to put in the time,” Peterson said, adding that the previous summer she and Lind had spent barely two weeks in their Pocatello home all season, instead staying in Challis where they scouted portions of the route. “I’m super fortunate to be able to kind of live out there and scout it. There’s a couple’s part of it—where Cody was the only person who’d ever done the route, like going off the backside of Leatherman Peak. I’m now the only female to have soloed the backside of that mountain.” When it came to “go time,” Peterson planned to go solo as much as possible on the trek.
“If it’s going to be an FKT, I wanted to know the route; I wanted to be competent on it myself, not just following Cody,” she said. Cody holds the men’s solo FKT effort at just over 20 hours.
After running Hyndman together in the dark and getting shuttled to the Borah trailhead, Peterson spent nine hours by herself traversing up and over Borah Peak to Leatherman, checking off Mount Idaho along the way.
“I’ll be honest, it freaks me out to be out there. A rock can come loose and fall on you really easily,” Peterson admitted. “That’s the part that’s so awe inspiring, being out there. It makes you feel human, it makes you feel vulnerable, but it makes you feel on top of the world—conquering things and moving through the mountains.”
Though it wasn’t a race-day effort with race-day pressure, Peterson said she redlined a few times, especially racing up Mt. Church worried some inclement weather might chase her off the route. The clouds diverted around the range though, and Peterson made the traverse intact.
Up the final climb to Diamond Peak, Peterson’s watch read 27:18. Paul Lind relayed that the second fastest time, behind Cody’s, was 28:18. “Cody and I were maybe ¾ of the way up Diamond when we realized how fast I’d been going,” Peterson said. “I don’t know if it’s ironic or funny that I only realized that with an hour to go.”
Her final time was 28:28, the third fastest by anyone on the route and the fastest by a woman by two days (not counting her previous record).
“It’s such a huge feat, but there’s definitely ten minutes in there somewhere,” Peterson said, admitting she’s spent many moments reflecting on where she may have rested too long.
“But what better way to go out and appreciate where you live?”
The Lost River range forever awaits.
BALANCING ACT
While warming up for a 10,000-meter race at a track meet in California, Megan Lacy found herself running easy laps on the infield next to Jakob Ingrebrigtsen, an Olympic gold medalist and World Champion track star from Norway. Intimidating? You bet.
Meagan Lacy is the successful CEO of the tech start-up, LUMINEYE and a member of TEAM USA.
PHOTO BY KYLE MOELLER
“I’ve had this underdog mentality for the last few years, and sometimes it’s easier to approach things from that side,” Lacy said. “But I’ve started to get better at putting myself on the line thinking that I belong there with the best.” Lacy owes that mental shift, in large part, to the last year she’s spent competing as a trail runner.
The Stanford and Boise State graduate ran track and cross country in college and continued competing after graduation, moving to road races and marathons while simultaneously founding a tech startup, Lumineye. The purple-haired runner saw success on the roads, including qualifying for the 2020 Olympic Trials in the marathon, but had dreams of finishing higher in the results that were often hampered by injuries. Her competitive career saw its fair share of ups and downs.
For the ups, she set personal bests at every distance, won back-to-back Race to Robie Creek titles and set the existing course record at the fabled Boise race. But for the lows, she dropped out of the Olympic Trials, and last fall, the Chicago Marathon. The latter was mentally crushing after running the first portion of the marathon on pace to break 2:30.
Neither result left Lacy down for long—there was always another goal calling to her.
“I think I have a tendency in my life to not focus on one thing, and do a bit of everything at once,” Lacy said. “It’s good, if something’s not going perfectly—my startup, or running—I can pivot and still be enthusiastic.”
One of the most recent pivots has been to veer from the roads to embrace the trail- running scene, where Lacy had previously seen success. In 2021, training for Chicago, Lacy ran the Gnar Gnar trail race at Mount Hood, finishing fourth in the ridiculously steep race and qualifying her to represent Team USA at the World Mountain Running Championships.
The photo of her at the finish line, half smiling, half sobbing for joy, is her favorite running picture.
“I made one of my lifetime goals right there, making a World Championship team and after so many years of ups and downs, I could hardly believe it was happening,” Lacy said. Her mental fitness had caught up to her physical fitness. It was enough impetus to consider focusing a little more energy on a single discipline in her life.
This spring, she raced…everything. Numerous national championship trail races at myriad distances, sometimes racing back-to-back days in a weekend. At the Broken Arrow Sky Race, she raced the Vertical Kilometer (an uphill-only race), finishing 15th in a world class field. The next day, she hopped in the 28k distance as a long run, finishing 16th.
“Those races were huge for me, because I’m a mountain runner who’s scared of heights and I faced that fear on those courses,” Lacy said. “I’m proud of myself for even climbing up a mountain like that.”
PHOTO BY BRODY SMITH
It’s worth mentioning that this mountain runner who is scared of heights usually descends from those heights at sub-fiveminute-mile pace on singletrack.
Foreseeably for the next year, Lacy is adopting a slightly more single-minded approach to running, going all in on the trails, even serving on the Mountain Ultra Trail Council for running’s national governing body.
“I’m at a crossroads where I’m fortunate enough that I can focus on track, road running, or trail racing at a pretty high level, higher than I thought possible when I left college running,” said Lacy. “The 2023 World Trail Championships is coming up so soon, so this is my moment to try trail running at a pretty high level. Plus, it still gives me enough time to qualify for the Olympic Trials in the marathon for 2024.” The mountains are calling. Nuff said.
