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Western States Trail Museum: Home in Auburn to preserve a long and storied history

The many tales of a storied and remarkable trans-Sierra trail will soon come alive with the opening of the Western States Trail Museum. Supported by the City of Auburn with a lease arrangement for a portion of the former City Hall in Auburn’s historic Central Square, and with tenant improvements underway, the Museum’s Board of Directors is hopeful the facility will open its doors later in 2025. The location is 1103 High Street, Suite 300, in Auburn, California.

In the mid-1960s, the Governors of Nevada and California encouraged preserving the Capitol-to-Capitol route between Carson City and Sacramento, along with its relevant artifacts and memorabilia. As a part of this history, the incredible lore of the Western States Trail stands ready to be shared with the public.

The mission of the Museum is to educate the public about the trail’s heritage through creative interpretive exhibits, artifacts, oral histories, docent-led field trips, speaker and film series, podcasts, and community engagements with modern day endurance events. The Western States Trail Museum archives will also serve as a research center for anyone who wants to learn more about this truly special trail. Please contact the Museum if you have something worth sharing.

The origin of the trail can be traced to the prehistoric era when Native Americans crossed the Sierra Nevada mountain range on trade routes to barter between the Nisenan, Washoe, and Paiute people, as well as to gather and hunt for food. By 1860, the Western States Trail route was well known as the shortest route over the Sierra Nevada from the gold mines of California’s Mother Lode to the Comstock Silver Lode in western Nevada.

In September, 1931, accompanied by five members from Parlor 59 of the Native Sons of the Golden West, Tahoe City, California Constable Robert Montgomery Watson and the group relocated and signed this early pioneer route that had been nearly forgotten. In 1955, Auburn businessman Wendell T. Robie led the founding of the annual Western States Trail 100 Mile One Day Ride, an equestrian event now known as the Tevis Cup. Robie established in 1974 what became an internationally celebrated crown jewel of ultramarathons, the Western States 100-Mile Endurance Run.

For more information about the Museum or to get involved, visit www.wstrailmuseum.org or email info@wstrailmuseum.org

Posted in General Interest, Trail Preservation | on: May 14th, 2025 by JohnT | Comments Off on Western States Trail Museum: Home in Auburn to preserve a long and storied history

Granite Chief Wilderness Trail Re-Route Project Update

The trail through Granite Chief Wilderness that we use on race day stretches for 6.5 miles. The western portion of the trail was rehabilitated several years ago when it was accepted into the wilderness. The eastern portion was developed long before modern trail building standards were set, and is being re-routed to improve user safety, avoid environmentally sensitive areas, improve sustainability, and provide commanding views.

GCW

We have actively been working on this project for the last two summers (only 10-12 weeks are snow free each year).  Work has been performed by USFS employees, a 20-person California Conservation Corp trail crew, and our volunteers.  The work has been funded by the Great American Outdoor Act ($1.2M), designed to cover most of the project. Although $0.5M in funding remains, and the USFS was poised to complete contracts to engage a trail crew for this summer, the funding for the project has now been frozen by DOGE and inaccessible, and we cannot hire a trail crew for 2025.

The USFS and our volunteers still plan to work on the project this summer, and we hope to complete enough of the re-routed trail that we can use about 2 miles of the new trail for our event in 2026, which will get us up and out of the bogs. But to get there we need your help.   To date our four scheduled trail work weekends are only about half full, so come join us on the weekends of July 26th/27th, August 16th/17th,  September 6th/7th, and/or September 20th/21st.

To signup please visit https://www.wser.org/volunteering/trail-stewardship/trail-work-opportunities/

Posted in General Interest, Trail Preservation, WSER Foundation | on: April 28th, 2025 by Craig | Comments Off on Granite Chief Wilderness Trail Re-Route Project Update

2025 Lottery Statistics

Last updated: December 5, 2024 at 10:21 am

The 2025 race lottery will be held on December 7, 2024 in front of a live audience at the Placer High School auditorium in Auburn, CA beginning at 8:00 a.m. PST. We expect to be done by 11:00 a.m. As names are randomly selected, they will be posted at https://lottery.wser.org in real-time. There will also be live video coverage of the lottery on our Youtube Channel beginning at 7:00 a.m. PST.

Each applicant ran a qualifying race of 100k or longer within the last year to be eligible to enter. Some have done so for many years. Each runner who enters the lottery and fails to gain entry into the Run (and otherwise doesn’t gain an entry via other means such as an aid station, sponsor, or HOKA Golden Ticket spot) will have additional tickets in the hat when entering the lottery the following year, thus improving the probability of being selected. Every lottery applicant will receive 2^(n-1) tickets in the hat where n is the number of years entering the lottery without gaining entry. That is, 1st year applicants = 1 ticket, 2nd year = 2 tickets, 3rd year = 4 tickets, 4th year = 8 tickets, and so on. The maximum number of years for the 2025 lottery is 10 years or 512 tickets.

You can view the final 2025 applicants and their ticket counts.

We will be starting 369 runners in 2025. As we began in 2017, we are using a wait list model instead of overbooking like we had for decades to get the target number of starters which is the number we are legally allowed to run through the Granite Chief Wilderness. 109 of those 369 are automatic entrants resulting in 260 lottery spots. 257 of those will be selected in the lottery proper. The final three entrants to get to 369 will be selected from those in the audience. The probabilities of being selected as one of the 260 in the lottery are as follows:

We will also select an additional 75 names for the ordered wait list. What are the chances of getting into the race if you are selected for the wait list? In 2024 the 35th person on the wait list got into the race Friday before the race. In 2023 we went down to the 56th person on the list. In 2022 we exhausted the wait list of 75. In 2021 we exhausted the wait list of 50 which was rolled over from 2020. In 2019 the last person to get a spot on the starting line was selected 31st. In 2018 the 36th person on the list got in, in 2017 the 39th person got in. All the historical data from the wait lists can be found here.

Good luck to all.

Posted in General Interest, Race News | on: December 3rd, 2024 by Craig | Comments Off on 2025 Lottery Statistics

TOPHER GAYLORD NAMED PRESIDENT OF WESTERN STATES ENDURANCE RUN

Topher Gaylord, a longtime member of the Western States Endurance Run Board of Directors and a leading voice in the sport of ultrarunning, has been elected President of the WSER Board of Directors.

Gaylord succeeds Diana Fitzpatrick, whose term as President ended at the end of September following five years.

“As the first 100-mile trail race in the world, Western States Endurance Run strives to be a leader in the sport, honoring our traditions and evolving proactively with the sport.  We are an organization fueled by the community for the community with tremendous people who make the run special for every participant who has the opportunity to run Western States.  It is a privilege to serve in this leadership role for our organization,” said Gaylord.

Gaylord, whose experience as a competitor, organizer and thought leader in the sport dates back more than 25 years, has been a member of the WSER Board since 2016. During that time, Gaylord has served as a vice president for WSER and played instrumental roles in a number of WSER’s most notable successes. This has included WSER’s ongoing presenting sponsorship agreement with HOKA and historic growth overall in terms of partnership agreements, the production of a first-ever and continuing Live Broadcast of the event, and trail stewardship initiatives that have worked to open more of the Western States Trail to the public.

“I am extremely excited for the start of a new era for our race with Topher as our President,” said Fitzpatrick, who remains on the WSER Board as Vice President. “I don’t know if there is a more respected person in our sport than Topher. His keen perspective, which now dates back an entire generation of ultrarunners, his ability of bringing groups together for the common good, and his strategic sense of where the sport is headed next is what we need right now.”

Added Race Director Craig Thornley, now entering his 13th year as race director: “It’s been a distinct pleasure, both professionally and personally, to work with Diana over the past five years in furthering our Run’s mission. I cannot thank her enough for her dedication to all things Western States. I’ve known and worked with Topher for a very long time. He’s an incredibly gifted person in how he mixes his experiences as a leader in the outdoor space and in particular in ultrarunning, with an uncanny ability to always find the best in people and in organizations. He has big shoes to fill. I have every confidence he will.”

Gaylord’s career in global athletic and sports leadership includes executive-level positions with companies such as VF Corporation in North America, Europe, and Asia, Columbia Sportswear, Mountain Hardwear, Under Armour and The North Face. He ran his first Western States in 1998 and is a seven-time finisher of the Run. In 2003, he was the first American male finisher at the first-ever Ultra-Trail Du Mont-Blanc.

The organization’s officers for the upcoming 2025 race cycle include Gaylord as President, Fitzpatrick as Vice President, Lamont King as Treasurer and Kara Teklinski as Secretary.

Posted in General Interest, Race News, WSER Foundation | on: October 4th, 2024 by JohnT | Comments Off on TOPHER GAYLORD NAMED PRESIDENT OF WESTERN STATES ENDURANCE RUN

2024 Race Recap

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT: John Trent, WSER Media Relations, press@wser.org

SCHIDE AND WALMSLEY’S WINS AT WESTERN STATES ENDURANCE RUN AMONG FASTEST EVER IN EVENT HISTORY

AUBURN, Calif. – Katie Schide and Jim Walmsley both ran the second-fastest times ever in winning the women’s and the men’s races, respectively, on Saturday at the 51st Western States Endurance Run.

Schide, 32, of Gardiner, Maine, who finished second in 2023, led the women’s race from the very beginning and finished in 15 hours and 46 minutes, second only to Courtney Dauwalter’s 2023 course record of 15:29. It was a near-hour improvement of her 2023 time of 16:43.

Walmsley, 34, of Flagstaff, Arizona, who set the men’s course record of 14:09 in 2019, returned to Western States after a three-year absence. He held off multiple challenges from second-place finisher Rod Farvard, 28, of Mammoth Lakes, in winning for the fourth time at Western States. Walmsley’s finished in 14:13, with Farvard taking second in 14:24.

2024’s run saw 286 runners cross the finish line at Placer High School in Auburn, with 109 runners culminating their journey that had started 100.2 miles earlier in Olympic Valley, California, in under 24 hours.

Schide’s wire-to-wire win was just one of several highlights in the women’s race. The top 10 women combined to record the swiftest women’s race in Western States history. Fuzhao Xiang, 32, of China, finished in the third-fastest time in run history in 16:20. Eszter Csillag, 39, a Hungarian runner who lives in Hong Kong, finished in third place in 16:42. In all, and for the first time ever at Western States, the top six women finished under 17 hours, including 42-year-old Ida Nilsson of Sweden, who finished in 16:56 to set a new master’s (40-49) age group record.

The high competitiveness of the women’s field was also seen in overall standings. Following Schide’s 13th-place finish, the next nine women finishers took the next 14 spots overall. It was a continuation of a similarly strong showing by Western States’ women’s field. “Last year we saw the top ten women totally exploding what everyone thought was possible,” Schide said moments after her victory on Saturday. “It seems like it is going to happen again today.”

Schide, the UTMB 2022 champion who had run away from a Golden Ticket field in April and set a new course record at The Canyons 100K in Auburn, said her 2023 run at Western States helped her on Saturday. Schide was buoyed as she saw familiar Western States volunteers from 2023, and felt a rising sense of comfort as she spotted course landmarks,

“During the whole race I took confidence in every place I was at,” she said. “That felt really reassuring: I know where I am, I know what to do.”

Walmsley, in making his return to Western States after focusing the past two professional running calendars on living in France and making good on a goal of finally winning UTMB last August, also knew what he needed to do: Fight off repeated challenges from Farvard.

Walmsley, eventual third-place men’s finisher Hayden Hawks, 33, of Cedar City, Utah (who would finish just 16 seconds behind Farvard), and fourth-place finisher Daniel Jones, 33, of New Zealand (who finished in 14:32), were all together at the 43-mile Last Chance aid station. Then it was Farvard who mounted a challenge. Farvard was only eight seconds behind Walmsley at the 62-mile aid station at Foresthill before surging into the lead by one minute at the Dardanelles (mile 65) aid station. Walmsley retook the lead at the Ford’s Bar (mile 73) aid station before Farvard mounted yet another charge to take a four-minute lead on the climb up to the Green Gate aid station at mile 79.8.

Throughout, Walmsley was impressed by Farvard’s tenacity and tactics. “Rod was just crushing me in the aid stations, just taking chunks of minutes every single time,” Walmsley said.

Fortified after taking in extra fluids and changing socks and shoes at an admitted low point at Green Gate, Walmsley rallied. By Auburn Lake Trails Walmsley held an 82-second advantage over Farvard, with the advantage swelling to 11 minutes at Pointed Rocks aid station (mile 94.3).

After his win, Walmsley noted that he was “really proud of this one.”

“Rod just ran an incredible day,” Walmsley said. His voice breaking as he was interviewed, Walmsley added, “It brings a lot of emotion because it was just really hard.”

Posted in General Interest, Race News | on: July 1st, 2024 by JohnT | Comments Off on 2024 Race Recap