Going Up: Mountain Climbing for Runners

Before I was a runner I was a hiker. My father took my brother and me hiking in Acadia nearly every week when we were little. The park was literally in our backyard, so getting to trailheads didn’t take very long and we knew how to avoid crowded areas in the summer (though it was a lot less crowded in general back then; it was the ‘70s after all).

The hikes made for some of our best family time. My brother and I really enjoyed the cold sodas that Dad bought and packed to the top for us (Orange Crush! RC Cola! Mello Yello! Just plain Coke!), and those pink granite summit ledges quickly became my favorite place to be as a kid (well, after the Star-Wars-toy aisle up at Woolworths, that is).

By fourth grade I’d made it to the summit of nearly every peak in the park. By fifth grade I’d climbed Katahdin, and by the end of high-school I’d made it to the top of every mountain in Acadia (and obsessively set foot on every foot of every trail on the entire island; I still have the old AMC map full of orange magic-marker lines that I used to track my progress). The thrill of making it to the top of new peaks never got old.

All of which is just to say that the climbing came first for me. Running started as a lark one day when, as Dad and my brother and I descended the north ridge of Dorr Mountain, we decided to just let gravity win. Instead of carefully stepping as we made our way down, we just did what our bodies wanted us to do: we stopped braking and ran. Down the open ledges, flying over occasional drops, leaping off rocks, and sometimes swinging on tree branches. Dangerously but thrillingly, the precise placement of a next footfall was decided in mid-air. We whooped, we hollered, and we laughed, and it was so much freaking fun. At the bottom, we knew we’d just established a grand new family tradition. The climb, which did come first, led the way to superb descent delights.

Over time, however, the running spread to more than just downhills. Hiking boots gave way to trail shoes. And the big backpacks of yore evolved into hydration vests while Nalgene bottles morphed into handheld carry bottles. It was the mid-90s, and I learned about trail running. The national magazines and websites didn’t exist yet, but a now-defunct regional journal called Running Wild chronicled all aspects of the northeastern trail running scene.

Today, runners here where I live in the Pioneer Valley area of western Massachusetts are fortunate to have a bounty of appealing local peaks to scamper around on. Among the mountains that offer enjoyable runs (both up and down) are Mt. Warner in Hadley (a 2-mile loop); Mt. Tom in Holyoke/Easthampton (many miles of options); Mt. Toby in Sunderland/Montague (run up the fire road, soar down the RFT on Cranberry Ridge); Sugarloaf; Pocumtuck Ridge; Greenfield Ridge; Northfield Mountain (the Rose Ledge Trail loop is terrific); Mt. Grace; and Moore Hill in DAR State Forest (try the lovely NEMBA Trail). So many fun options.

Mountain running basically combines nearly everything I love into one enticing activity. I run roads and tracks too, for variety and training, but my heart is still out in the hills, freely flowing up and over those peaks with wild abandon and joy.

*****

Ben is the author of the guidebook Trail Running Western Massachusetts and the editor of the newsletter of the Sugarloaf Mountain Athletic Club, The Sugarloaf Sun.