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How many of Boise’s foothills trails have you been on?

Sign up for the Boise Trails Challenge and by July 15, you might be able to say all of them.

The Boise Trails Challenge is an annual self-paced competition to bike, hike and/or run nearly all of the trails in the Ridge to Rivers trail system in one month, from June 15 to July 15. In 30 days, participants try to complete 95 trails covering 177 miles.

It’s not easy. And that’s the point.

The beginning

In the summer of 2017, local mountain bikers and best friends Kirk Cheney and Jason Delgadillo co-founded BoiseTrails.com. Back then, there was no comprehensive online resource for Boise’s trails. Ridge to Rivers did not have an online trail map. Most of us were either referencing paper maps or trailhead maps, or piecing together info from AllTrails or Strava or MapMyRun. Jason and Kirk had seen BendTrails.org and reached out to create a sister site for Boise.

That same summer, Jason heard that some of his mountain biker friends were trying to ride every trail on the Ridge to Rivers map in one month. Always up for a challenge, Jason jumped at the opportunity to participate. Then he took it a step further.

Jason thought it would be way cooler if your mileage was tracked automatically via GPS, so you could easily record which trails you had completed. He also thought it should be open to the entire trail-user community. Jason got in touch with some tech-savvy friends and the Boise Trails Challenge was born. They planned the inaugural challenge for August 2018.

Tragically, on May 12, 2018, Jason passed away in a mountain biking accident.

Jason was an amazing person. He was a loving husband and father to five beautiful children, a friend to so many, and an avid adventure seeker. He loved to have fun and he loved to make other people happy. He was a “type two fun” person – the kind of person who finds joy in doing really hard things; the type of person who suffers through something, then says, “well that was fun.” At Jason’s funeral, one of his friends said that Jason was the type of person to say “that sounds like a lot of work - let’s do it.” Jason loved to be out on his mountain bike, and he especially loved to climb (go uphill) on his bike, when most mountain bikers are forever chasing the downhill thrill. He biked in every season and at any time of the day.

At the time of Jason’s accident, much of the inaugural challenge had been planned, but there were still things that needed to be done to make it a reality. Kirk, along with developers Dustin Patterson and Doug Green, and a handful of other friends decided that the challenge must go on. Not only would that be what Jason would want, it would become his legacy.

The challenge

I said this before but I’ll say it again: the Boise Trails Challenge is hard.

“It's so Jason,” said Dana Delgadillo, Jason’s wife and organizer of the Boise Trails Challenge. “Yes, there's really fun parts and there's beautiful views, but there's also stuff that you hate. And that's so Jason. You know, type two fun.”

People do finish the challenge every year, but even more people don’t. Regardless how far you get, it’s a huge commitment to take on. It tests you physically, mentally, and it takes a ton of time.

The first year, in 2018, a total of 324 people participated in the challenge and only 94 people completed it. Almost all of the finishers were on bikes. Mike Modica was the first and only on-foot finisher.

In year two, 2019, participation doubled exactly to 648 people and 203 people finished it. Almost all the finishers were on bikes, but that time, Marley Marshall became the first on foot finisher.

Year three, 2020, had much more participation (no surprise) with 1,190 participants and 500 finishers, a mix of bike and on foot.

Year four, 2021, had 1,033 participants and 365 finishers. 80% of finishers were on bikes. A highlight that year was Alyssa Rogers, who broke the record for on-foot finishers by a long shot.

“We had never had anyone on foot finish that fast, like she blew it out of the water by three days or something. She is so amazing,” said Dana. “I think for a lot of people, it's like the challenge is just fun, you know, but Alyssa connected with Jason – which means so much to me.”

Alyssa told Dana she felt like Jason gave her purpose. Her experience sounds amazing and awful (which is running long distances in a nutshell). You can read the Idaho Statesman’s interview with her here, but in short: Alyssa ran all 170 miles in four days. She ran about 45 miles a day – just shy of two marathons in a day, for four days straight. She was running before the sun came up and after it went down. She had knee pain one day, then pain in her Achilles tendon the next. On her final day, she ended up cutting the back off a pair of running shoes and tying them on tight to help relieve her tendon pain. She finished the challenge in 116 hours, wearing backless shoes and a huge badge of honor.

Alyssa told the Statesman, “If you’re doing this (challenge), you’re doing it for yourself and you’re also doing it in the memory of Jason and his family. Whenever I started to feel pretty low, I would just think of that.”

This is not the first time Dana has heard this sentiment, that people connect to Jason while they’re out there doing the challenge. “I love that people do it for fun, because Jason was all about fun,” she said. “But sometimes things go a little deeper, and I love it when they do.”

Year five, 2022, had 952 participants and 397 finishers. That year also had some notable finishers. The first finisher was Katelyn Cook, a 15 year-old mountain biker who completed the challenge with her dad and uncle. Another finisher was Wesley Chandler, a 12-year old mountain biker who completed the challenge with his parents.

“It’s a whole new generation doing it now, too. It’s pretty cool,” said Dana.

Finishing the challenge is a huge accomplishment, but even getting out there is an accomplishment on its own. There are so many things that make it such a challenge. The sheer volume of trails is one thing, then add the day-to-day busyness of life, summer heat, random rainstorms. And there’s the element of completing entire trails. There are trails that are an out-and-back, or that have a tiny section that you have to loop back around to complete in order to get credit. There’s situations where you are putting in work that doesn’t technically count. But it’s all part of the (type two) fun.

“You get to see people push themselves in amazing ways. Even if it's finishing by the last day,” said Dana.

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Sponsored by Downtown Boise Association​

Alive After 5 is back!

Downtown Boise's free summer concert series, Alive After 5 is back for its 36th season. Enjoy live music by local and touring bands on the Grove Plaza, Wednesdays at 5pm. All shows are free, family-friendly and lots of fun! Here's the schedule:

• June 21: The Black Tones + MÔS
• June 28: Devon Gilfillian + Bittermint
• July 12: Vincent Neil Emerson + Ryan Curtis
• July 19: Jackie Venson + Ashley Rose
• August 2: Imarhan + Moon's Owl Mages
• August 9: Kaleta & Super Yamba Band + Lobo Lara
• August 16: Bully + Bevs Rage & The Drinks + Plum Vision

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The experience

While the challenge is about pushing yourself, something deeper happens to people out there. We are given space, time, fresh air. When you’re out there, above the city, putting one foot in front of the other – we start to work through things. Life things. Work things. Problems. Grief.

“It really is an opportunity to heal whatever you need,” said Dana. “​​I think that's the case for a lot of people – like whatever they're carrying, it's like a chance to set it down.”

There are hundreds of stories to observe this. Dana has met people who have hiked and biked through sobriety, divorce, loss, change. People quite literally trudge through all their stuff as they are trudging along the trail; one foot in front of the other. There’s also people who find a deeper sense of happiness, of connection to this place we call home.

Dana has found this on the trails for herself. She and her kids have participated in the challenge multiple times and she’s finished it three times. Of course, she feels very connected to her husband out there. Every year on May 12, Dana and her family hike Watchman's trail. Jason had biked that same trail just a few days before the accident. He loved the wildflowers and had taken a bunch of photos and videos of himself riding through the fields of flowers. But she loves this trail for the perspective it offers, too. It’s hard at the beginning – it’s up and up. But then you come around onto the other side of the mountain and you have a chance to look down at where you started.

“You look back and think wow, we’ve gone that far in that amount of time, because you don't really feel like you're going up,” said Dana. “I think that's like life – it's hard to get the perspective of just how far you’ve climbed.”

2023 challenge

The 2023 Boise Trails Challenge starts on Thursday, June 15, 2023 at 12:00:01 am and ends on Saturday, July 15, 2023 at 11:59:59pm. This year’s challenge includes 95 trails covering 177 miles with roughly 36,000 feet of elevation gain. There’s a few trail changes from years past: the new Hawkins Range Reserve trails are included this year and some previous trails have been removed, like Lucky Peak, which was excluded this year to help keep wildlife disturbances to a minimum.

Going into year six, Jason’s spirit is engrained in every part of the Boise Trails Challenge.

“I know he would love it. I feel that sometimes, like I feel how much he loves it,” said Dana. “He liked to make people laugh and he liked to make people happy. And I feel like even when people are out there suffering, he's out there like, yeah they're gonna have that type two fun when they're done.”

Who knows what the challenge would be like if Jason were here. Maybe it would be different, bigger. Maybe not.

“I wish that he was here to enjoy it,” said Dana. “And the way life happened, it made the challenge something it never would have been with him here, you know?”

You can sign up for the Boise Trails Challenge at boisetrailschallenge.com, and sign ups remain open until the challenge ends on July 15. You can sign up for biking, on foot, or a bike/foot combo. It’s $45 to compete and you have to have a Strava account, which is the free app that tracks your activity via GPS. Trails can be completed in any order and you don’t have to complete entire trails all at once, however most trails are broken into segments and you do have to complete segments in a single activity to get credit. For example, Table Rock is broken into seven segments. You could hike up the face and complete six segments one day, then the next day you could hike up the other side via Tram Trail and check off that segment and the final Table Rock segment at the top. You can find a complete list and map of trails and segments here.

Whether you do it for yourself, for Jason, or for some other reason, the Boise Trails Challenge is for everyone. Maybe the challenge is to channel that type two fun, maybe it’s to connect to something bigger than yourself. Whatever your reason, I hope you think of Jason when you’re out there.

“I'm just so grateful for the connection it is for me, and for really everyone who gets to do it, if they know. They get to feel that connection to him too,” said Dana.

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Thanks for reading!

With love from Boise,

Marissa

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