OURAY 100 HISTORY: HOW A WHIM BECAME ONE OF AMERICA'S HARDEST 100-MILERS

The Ouray 100 Mile Endurance Run covers about 102 miles through the San Juan Mountains of southwestern Colorado, climbing roughly 42,000 feet along the way. It runs out of Fellin Park in the town of Ouray, only yards from the local hot springs, and sends runners up and down a series of out-and-backs and loops that tag high passes and old mining sites. The race is widely described as one of the most difficult 100-milers in the United States. It did not start out that way.

Ouray sits at about 7,800 feet in a steep box canyon at the southern end of the Uncompahgre River valley, ringed by peaks that rise well above 13,000 feet. The town built its identity on mining and on the mountains that surround it, and the same terrain that drew prospectors now defines the race. The Ouray 100 spends most of its distance high in those mountains, far above the valley floor where it begins.

A First-Time Race Director

The event traces to Charles Johnston, who moved from Houston, Texas, to Montrose, Colorado, in 2013 for a job as a corporate finance executive. He had run a few ultras but knew little about southwestern Colorado and almost nothing about the region's established 100-mile race, the Hardrock Hundred. A drive up Imogene Pass Road and a pacing stint at the Leadville 100 that year introduced him to the San Juans and to Colorado ultrarunning.

Johnston decided to become a race director in 2014, while working full time and raising a young family. He did not ease into it. That year he launched a 50K near Montrose in May, a 100K near Gunnison in June, another 100-miler near Crawford in July, and the first Ouray 100 in August.

The first edition bore little resemblance to the race that exists today. It used a course built largely on county roads, with around 20,000 feet of elevation gain. Thirty-five runners started and 19 finished. Johnston has said the inaugural event lost money and was, by his own account, a disaster. Among the starters was Courtney Dauwalter, then far less known than she would later become, who finished first among women and near the front of the overall field.

The Overhaul

The complaint Johnston heard most after 2014 was that the course spent too little time in the mountains. He consulted Jan Peart, a longtime area runner and retired race director, who sketched out a concept close to the current route. The new layout kept the course geographically concentrated, which simplified permitting and aid station logistics.

When Johnston added up the elevation gain on the new route, it came to roughly 38,000 feet. He decided that was not enough and reworked it until the climbing total cleared 40,000 feet. For comparison, the neighboring Hardrock Hundred climbs about 33,000 feet over a similar distance. The redesigned Ouray course gained close to 42,000 feet, more than 25 percent above its better-known neighbor.

The change took effect for the 2015 edition, and it transformed the event into a different race entirely. The first year on the old county-road course is generally treated as a footnote, since almost nothing about it carried over.

A Disastrous Second Year

The 2015 race went badly. Johnston later acknowledged he had done a poor job preparing entrants for how much harder the new course would be. He set a 4 a.m. start, then arrived late to the start line himself after a stretch of personal and professional strain. A promised live-tracking system failed, leaving crews unable to follow their runners.

The weather made everything worse. Rain fell for more than 48 hours, and the storms and steep terrain threw off GPS watches, which logged distances well beyond the actual course and fueled confusion among the field. Forty-five runners started the 2015 Ouray 100 and nine finished.

The fallout was serious. Johnston has said a group of frustrated participants petitioned the Forest Service to revoke the event's permit. Rather than walk away, he kept the race going and set out to repair its reputation. He also moved the start to a more reasonable 8 a.m.

Building a Reputation

The race found firmer footing over the next several years. In 2016, the field stayed small, with 30 starters and five finishers. Professional ultrarunner Avery Collins won that edition in 34:01, a result later documented in a short film about his race, in which he fell near the back of the field after going off course early and worked his way to the front. The 2016 race became the event's best-known story to a wider audience.

Participation grew in 2017, with 58 starters and 22 finishers. That year also produced the first women's finishers on the post-overhaul course, several seasons after the redesign, a measure of how punishing the new layout had proven.

By the time the race had been running for five years, it had reached a level of participation that suggested it was no longer a fringe experiment. It had also developed a clear identity as a low-key, no-frills, old-school mountain 100, run without the lottery system that limits entry to many of its peers.

What Makes the Course Hard

The difficulty comes from a combination of vertical gain, altitude, and terrain. The course holds runners between roughly 10,000 and 13,000 feet for long stretches, with high points near Fort Peabody and Imogene Pass above 13,000 feet. Much of the route sits above tree line, where afternoon thunderstorms are a routine and serious hazard.

The route reads like a tour of the area's mining history. It threads Camp Bird Road, Imogene Pass Road, the Chicago Tunnel, Fort Peabody, Corkscrew Gulch, and a string of named trails that climb out of the valley and return to it. Imogene Pass Road, which connects Ouray and Telluride, sits among the high points of the course, and several checkpoints fall at old mine sites scattered across the peaks.

The layout itself is unusual. Instead of a single large loop, the Ouray 100 strings together multiple out-and-back legs and loops radiating from the town, so runners repeatedly return toward Ouray before heading back out. Along the way they must tag certain peaks and checkpoints using hole punches placed at the top, marking their bibs as proof of passage. Runners have described the difficulty as building through the race, with the steepest and longest climbs saved for the closing miles.

That structure has an upside. Because runners cover the same segments in both directions, they pass one another often, which makes a remote mountain race more social than a point-to-point or single-loop course. The historical finisher rate has sat near a third of starters, a reflection of how much the climbing, the thin air, and the late, steep climbs take out of the field.

A Place in the Sport

The Ouray 100 occupies a specific niche in American ultrarunning. It offers a Hardrock-caliber San Juan experience without Hardrock's long lottery odds, and it asks for more total climbing than its famous neighbor. The race applied to become a Hardrock qualifier in 2016 but was not selected, with the Hardrock board indicating it did not need additional qualifiers at the time.

From a money-losing first attempt on county roads to a fixture among the hardest 100-milers in the country, the event's arc has been shaped by a single race director's willingness to keep rebuilding it. The 2026 edition is scheduled for July, sending another field up the same passes and back down toward the hot springs where the race begins and ends.