The Race That Cracked Ultrarunning Champion Clare Gallagher

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It was 5:30 A.M., pitch dark, 15 degrees Fahrenheit, and day three of the Snowman Race. We were camped in a village in the Lunana Valley in northern Bhutan, just a stone’s throw below the Tibetan border in the heart of the Eastern Himalayas.

“How’re we feeling?” I asked fellow runners in the dining tent over a breakfast of fried rice, eggs, pancakes, and sausage.

“Haha ha haaa!” roared Pascal Egli, an acclaimed Swiss mountain runner and glaciologist with tired bags under his mahogany eyes.

Privately, Pascal was worried about his injury-riddled knees. He wasn’t sure he could finish the five-day race, and he was anxious about putting any staff in jeopardy. This wasn’t just another trail race where you could drop out at the next aid station. The nearest road was a five-day walk away. The only escape option: a helicopter rescue about 6 miles into the day’s 23-mile stage with 6,500 feet of climbing. He was considering it.

“I think it will be very tough,” said Leki, a Bhutanese runner and forager from Laya, the village where the race started. We were all nervous about Gophu La Pass, which topped out at 17,896 feet. “The trail will be rocky and with ice. I think today will be the most challenging,” he nodded.

Bucking the trend, I was feeling optimistic about the day. The forecast was sunny and I believed—OK, I hoped—that today’s stage wouldn’t wreck me as badly as the first two, which I’d finished much slower than anyone anticipated. I thought maybe I was finally adjusting to the altitude and might be able to run today.

On the start line, the 16 of us racers laughed like giddy kids about to go to recess. “Also don’t die!” Luke Nelson, a runner and physician’s assistant from Pocatello, Idaho, yelled.

Little did I know I wouldn’t smile like that for a long time.

At His Majesty’s Invitation

The Snowman Race is a 110-mile, five-day stage race that follows a historic trekking route through the Bhutanese Himalayas. It’s a vision of His Majesty, the ever-popular, 44-year-old king of Bhutan, Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck, who believes trail runners are the ideal witnesses to share the impacts of our warming planet—specifically Bhutan’s melting glaciers—with the wider world.

I honestly didn’t believe Luke when he told me His Majesty came up with this idea: a mountainous stage race doubling as a climate change publicity stunt. I mean, let’s be real, trail running is a niche sport, at best. Why us? Wouldn’t it be easier to ask an NBA player to tweet something about melting glaciers?

“No. His Majesty specifically said trail runners are best suited to see the impacts,” Luke said, adding something about how I’d be a moron to miss out on this invitation. Known for prioritizing “gross national happiness” over gross domestic product, Bhutan opened its borders to visitors in 1974. The country limits tourists in an effort to preserve a landscape that remains so untouched, you can only see the glaciers by trekking for days on foot. In addition to the seven Bhutanese runners, the government would sponsor the nine foreigners invited to the race this year, waving the $150 per day tourist visas. We’d just pay for our flights and voluntary carbon offsets.

“Trail running is a niche sport, at best. Why us? Wouldn’t it be easier to ask an NBA player to tweet something about melting glaciers?”

I received the invitation in August, and the race was slated for October. I chewed it over for a few days. I despise being cold. I’d never done a stage race before. I feared my year-long back injury flaring up. I’d need my advisor’s permission to miss a month of school.

But, this was a climate change race! Since winning the Leadville 100 in 2016 and helping to start the trail running chapter of Protect Our Winters shortly after, I’ve spent my running career combining racing with environmental advocacy. Could a race halfway around the world actually serve as environmental advocacy?

Curious, honored, supported by my advisor, and just scared enough, I said yes.

“An Evil That Only We Can Undo”

It was 6 P.M. on day two, dark and lightly raining. We were in the new dining hall at Lunana Primary School. Cement blocks functioned as walls while wood beams held up the corrugated metal roof.

Namgay Dorji, the school’s principal, welcomed us to an evening of cultural dance prepared by his students. Exhausted from the first two days—we’d run over 40 miles with 11,000 feet of gain at an average elevation over 14,500 feet—I just wanted to eat and go to sleep. But, I’d come to enjoy students performing Bhutanese dance; we’d already watched hours of it on this trip. So, I settled into a lawn chair and pulled my beanie down. (Though new, this building lacked heat like most buildings in rural Bhutan.)

I squinted through the low light to see Namgay standing on a small wooden stage adorned with bright yellow tapestry lined with deep green, blue, and red trim. His plaid gho, Bhutan’s national dress robe, blended in nicely. I felt underdressed in my athletic gear.

Namgay spoke about how the Snowman Race was an incredible feat of physical strength. “But it also carries a firm message about climate change,” he said. I sighed. I still wasn’t sure how our presence here was making any difference to a planet-wide problem. But I straightened up and blinked to focus.

Namgay said that as we run through the majestic mountains, we’re bearing witness to the changing climate. “Melting glaciers, rising water, and unpredictable weather remind us that action is needed now, before it’s too late,” he said.

He told us that it wasn’t just his remote Lunana (which takes five days of walking to get to) that was threatened by climate change. Vulnerable communities around the world are suffering, including villages near the oceans that are “falling into the water,” due to sea level rise.

“On behalf of those people and places, I kindly ask every runner to carry our plea forward,” he said.

Hearing the principal mention ocean villages, I felt like I’d be hit by a truck. Back home, I study how humans impact the ocean, and as I thought about my academic interests—overfishing, coral bleaching, plastic pollution, sea level rise—I felt bubbles rise from my stomach to my throat.

“When you return home, please speak to the rich and powerful world leaders,” he said. “Ask them to help save us from the grip of climate change and evil created by humans. An evil that only we can undo.”

Maybe it was the altitude or my growling stomach, but Namgay’s speech struck a new cord with me. The climate change he spoke of felt specific and real.

This climate change didn’t mean nonprofit emails to be deleted or diluted hopes at the ballot box. It meant his village. It meant him and his students and their parents, who leaned against the walls of the dining hall. It meant that an up-valley glacier could melt, creating a big lake, which could swell and burst through its moraine dam, flooding this valley and the hundreds of homes in it—a phenomenon known as a glacier lake outburst flood, or GLOF. It meant the coastal people all over the world who face sea level rise, including my friends on the island of Palau in the western Pacific. It meant my neighbors and best friends and me in Boulder, Colorado, with its risk of wildfires. It meant the fate of entire peoples and entire species, like Florida’s Key Largo tree cactus, which just became the first species in the U.S. to go extinct due to rising sea levels.

Overcome, I bowed my head and wept. Next to me, another racer, Kelly Halpin from Jackson, Wyoming, was crying. Luke was too. I remembered Luke, who’d finished the first Snowman Race, telling me that this race would crack me. I could feel the pressure.

“When you return home, please speak to the rich and powerful world leaders. Ask them to help save us from the grip of climate change and evil created by humans.”

Before this trip, I’d been struggling with motivation in grad school, climate advocacy, even running. And yet the way Namgay personalized his fears of catastrophic climate disaster didn’t make me feel self-conscious about my privileged worries. All of our struggles are connected, the personal and the global. We’re all facing the realities of a warming planet.

In a country as prone to levity as seriousness, Namgay then invited us to enjoy the dancing. This was followed by Leki singing a karaoke love song in Dzongkha, Bhutan’s national language, to wrap up the night. I left the dining hall feeling full.

By High Water—Or Hell

The next morning, the valley was still in shadow as we gradually made our way along the Pho Chhu, meaning Male or Father River.

Outside the village of Tshojong, a woman waited on the frost-covered grass with a thermos of milk tea. Leki recognized her as Pego, from his hometown. He stopped to thank her for being out in the cold. Thinking about how this valley was at risk of a GLOF, like the deadly one in 1994 that killed 21 people, he kept running.

“Even though there were grasses and plants, it felt like the valley was still in recovery,” Leki said.  He could see erosion along the Pho Chhu and he felt bad for the valley’s people whose homeland could be flooded at any time. “I wouldn’t make a big or permanent house if I lived there,” he said. “I’d just live in a temporary house.”

Pascal, still worried about his knees but in awe of the mountains as the valley opened up, reached Pego shortly thereafter. “She was super cute just waiting for us.” He slowed down and drank two hot sips.

Pascal continued on, noticing ornate houses and more grazing yaks. He crossed into the sunlight, gazing at the mountains rising 23,000 feet into the sky to his left and at the mighty Pho Chhu to his right. Overcome by the beauty, he burst into tears.

His worries evaporated. “It’s kind of like I left everything behind, all the doubts,” he said. “I just wanted to get to the pass and see the glacier.”

Just a few miles later, I spilled a different flavor of tears.

After passing by Pego, I was running alone and lost track of the pink ribbons marking the course. So I resorted to following the GPX track on my watch, which I knew was from Luis Escobar when he walked the route two years ago. (Yes, that Luis from Born to Run, who is the Snowman Race’s gregarious international race director).

I crossed some rivulets and then crested a high berm to my right, which overlooked the Pho Chhu raging below. The track on my watch crossed the river’s wide braids, heading towards a village on the other side. My heart rate rose and I thought, what the heck, I’m not even two hours into this day and I have to ford the Father River? 

I descended to the Pho Chhu’s edge and stared across. The track went directly through the river right here? I felt confused and aghast that I had to do this. This is when I started talking loudly to myself. “Okay, Clare. You can do this. You have to cross the river. You can do this.” I scanned the river for the shallowest section.

Employing long, deep exhales I screamed, “YOU CAN DO THIS, CLARE!” I stepped into the aquamarine water, gripping my hot pink poles hard. The river rose to my crotch.

I got to the center rock island, completely shook. What the actual fuck, I thought. Without thinking much more, I dove into the next braid, screaming again. When I got to the riverbank, I was drenched and still in shock. I looked up at the village, Töncho. Sobbing, I walked into it and came across a woman herding yaks and a man standing in front of his intricately painted home.

I muttered, “Kuzu zangpo la,” “hello” in Dzongka. I was so embarrassed about what just happened. Here I was, a flustered, wet foreigner, fording the Father River while these people watched.

I threw my palms up and said, “Snowman Race?”

The man smiled kindly, said hello, and motioned through the village. I could see a trail snaking up the foothills just ahead.

Nodding in thanks, and determined to not be so stupid ever again, I crossed the village. I saw a pink ribbon and felt a million pounds lighter, despite my soaked feet and legs. Within minutes, a surprised Pascal caught up to me.

“Hey, Clare. What did you do?” He greeted me with his singsong long vowels.

“I crossed the river! It was so scary!” I responded.

“What? You didn’t take the suspension bridge?”

“Bridge?!”

“Nooooo, how did you miss it?” He said, turning back to look at me. “Oh my god,” he said, eyes wide.

Turns out the villages had built a new suspension bridge two years ago to better withstand summer floods, but the GPX track hadn’t been updated. We cringe-laughed at my mistake, both grateful that it didn’t turn out worse. Pascal ran off, cheerful. I started walking soon after, consumed by the altitude once again.

“So Many Rocks”

A few hours later, Leki reached the famed highpoint of the route, Gophu La Pass.

He expected the entire pass and surroundings to be covered in snow, and was struck by how dry and rocky the area looked compared to when he was there two years ago foraging for a rare medicinal herb called puti shing.

“Even my friends and parents, when they talk about Gophu La Pass from five, ten years back, they talk about how everywhere they’d see only glaciers and snow, but I saw so many rocks,” Leki said, adding that all of the herbs had already been picked. “We came back with empty hands.”

Leki makes most of his income foraging cordyceps fungi, which ultimately get sold as medicine in China. There are fewer cordyceps every year, which he attributes to overharvesting and the warming of the mountains. Indeed, evidence shows that the Bhutanese Himalayas, along with the broader region of southern Asia and the Tibetan Plateau, have experienced unprecedented warming over the past century, especially during winter and at higher altitudes above 13,000 feet.

The son of yak herders, Leki is the only one of his seven siblings to receive a formal education. The rest of his family lives in Laya, herding yaks and foraging. Leki went to high school in Bhutan, and then to university in Punjab, India, which he paid for with his foraging income.

He wants to get his master’s in physiotherapy in the Bhutanese capital, Thimphu, but he’s concerned about the fate of highlanders like his family. Also due to warming, grass quality is decreasing in the high mountains, putting strain on yak herders, who sell butter, milk, wool, and meat. Herd sizes have been declining in the past few decades. “I’m worried about the future,” he said. “How will we make a living if there are no cordyceps or yaks?”

At the top of the pass, Leki took a moment to offer some chocolate to the mountain gods and say a mantra. “In each and every kind of land or rock, even in mountains, they have their own protective local deities,” Leki said. “So we pray to these deities so they will help us.”

Not long after, exhilarated by the altitude, glaciers, and sun, Pascal could see Gophu La. He had started to feel good at 16,700 feet and he was running well and feeling happy.

“I saw the biggest glacier and part of it calved into a lake,” he said. Having seen hundreds of glaciers around the world in his career—he’s an assistant professor of geography at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology—he noticed that this glacier was not advancing. There wasn’t a lot of firn, which is perennial snow, and there were many visible crevasses. “If the glacier was in better health, at least part of it would be covered in firn,” he said.

Pascal bombed down the final descent in plain view of Gangkhar Puensum, the highest unclimbed mountain in the world at 24,836 feet.

By the time I crossed the pass hours later, the sun was past its zenith. I turned to my right and froze. The world’s scariest glacier stuck its tongue out at me. A mess of crevasses that looked like a mouth melted into a lake below. I felt like the glacier wanted to subdue me, along with all the demons of the Anthropocene.

I was overcome by dark thoughts. I thought about a GLOF bursting through the Lunana valley, killing Namgay and his students and their families. Killing me. The connectivity of everything hit me.

Imitating Leki and the other Bhutanese runners, I prayed that the runaway warming would stop. That we, everyone, would do something about climate change. Even sick with altitude, I understood why His Majesty dreamed up this race. This was, without question, the most remote place I’d ever been—hardly accessible by helicopter. Of course trail runners are ideal witnesses of the warming of this corner of  Earth—we can see and feel a lot on a run. The duty to be a messenger started to sink in.

Dead Last and Feeling Alive

Luke was right that this race would crack me. I’m familiar with winning big races, which require me to give it everything I have. But this time, I tried as hard as I could and finished dead last—my total time nearly 13 hours slower than the women’s winner Rosanna Buchauer of Germany.

I crossed the finish line on the final day with Kelly, unashamed of how relieved I was that the final miles were on a road. The day’s altitude and hours of knee-deep mud had broken me as a mountain runner.

Pascal and Luke finished together in the middle of the pack, a few hours behind men’s winner Sangay Wangchuk of Bhutan. Pascal’s knees were caked in mud, which covered layers of blue KT tape, like his legs were paper mache. Leki, who had been in contention for the men’s overall win, had to walk it in with a brace after tweaking his knee on day four. Turned out to be a partially torn ACL.

Despite coming in last, I felt like I’d won something. The last few days of the race weaved through forests of Himalayan hemlock (a furry, otherworldly type of conifer), high-alpine juniper, bamboo, rhododendron, spruce, blue pine, and cypress. Bhutan’s forests are as world-class as its mountains. I felt cocooned by the richness. Trees ten stories tall, mosses, orchids, and lichen everywhere. This forest has value, way more than any currency.

“Despite coming in last, I felt like I’d won something.”

Days later, within a few minutes of flying out of Paro, which is home to the country’s only international airport, all I could see was emerald. Trees were everywhere, on every hillside. Bhutan has protected over 70 percent of its forest. By law, that number cannot dip below 60 percent. Leki told me it’s very difficult to get a permit to fell a tree. “We protect our trees,” he said.

This is what forest conservation looks like, I thought. What a concept. 

The few roads on the hillsides looked like brown cracks in a sea of green. Not only had Bhutan shattered my running ego, but the landscape and its people had rewired my motivation to contribute to conservation. Seeing is one part of believing.

I believe there’s a future in which Bhutan’s conservation ethic is replicated elsewhere, like in my country, the United States. I believe Leki, Pascal, and I, spanning three continents, face the same plight.

And I believe that little by little, mile by mile, word by word, efforts by a few runners make a difference.