Watch: Backdoor to Baker

For most runners, training runs from home and epic trail-running adventures don’t mingle much. But on June 21, ultrarunners Jeremy Wolf and Krissy Moehl decided to marry the two. They left their sea-level homes in Bellingham, Washington and ran through city streets, over single track and empty dirt roads, and trekked over snow and glacier ice to reach Mount Baker at 10,781 ft. They left at 3 p.m. and ran through the night so they could reach the glaciers at daybreak while the snow was still firm. All told, the 64-mile trip took 20 hours.

“For most of us, backyard adventures are the easiest to plan but frequently go overlooked,” Wolf writes. “Our human desire is to explore new places on unfamiliar trails adds a sense of excitement along with fresh sensory stimulus. However, I challenge you to relook at what you have out your own
backdoor. Look beyond where you’ve run before, what lies over the hills or beyond the horizon that you currently can’t see. Look at a map and pick a new destination that you can run to from home and go.

“Even a familiar run that you do by headlamp in the dark can add a new sense of adventure to an old route. Or simply linking together multiple of your daily running routes into one giant run can be a feat in itself.

The point is to find something that excites you and is challenging to the point where you’re not 100 percent sure you can complete it. Because when you do reach that final destination on your adventure, there is no better feeling than the satisfaction that comes with completing something you weren’t sure was possible.”