‘Rite of spring’: Boiseans battle rain, snow as Race to Robie Creek comes ‘roaring back’
On a chilly and overcast Saturday morning, hundreds of people gathered at Fort Boise Park in preparation for a Boise tradition not seen in the City of Trees for three years: the Race to Robie Creek.
After a two-year COVID-19 hiatus, the grueling road and trail run up to Aldape Summit, which is know as one of the most difficult half marathons in the Pacific Northwest, was back.
“It’s kind of a rite of spring in Boise,” Michael Devitt, the race director, told the Idaho Statesman. “We’ve missed that, and I think everybody needs it.”
This year, the race organizers went with the theme “Roaring Back Robie,” with nods to the Roaring Twenties, the Jazz Age and Prohibition. Spectators dressed up as flappers or wore broad-lapeled suits.
An orchestrated dance at a purported speakeasy was broken up by a pair of mustached policemen driving a vintage Chevrolet Idaho State Police car right before the 13.1-mile race’s start.
Carmel n the Closers, a local band, played blues songs dating from the 1920s.
One participant ran up Reserve Street in a suit, carrying a sign that read “We want beer,” which was available at the race’s finish.
The Race to Robie Creek was first run in 1975 and climbs along Shaw Mountain Road in East Boise over 2,000 feet to Aldape Summit, at nearly 4,800 feet of elevation, before dropping down over the last few miles to the Robie Creek campground, west of Highway 21 past the Lucky Peak Reservoir.
For many, the arduousness is part of the point.
“One of the appeals of this race that makes it so unique is that it’s extremely difficult,” Devitt said. “It’s the hardest thing most people will do all year.”
Ted Arellano, of Caldwell, has run the race around 14 times.
“It is a difficult race,” he said, “but people have the same feeling when they get to the end —they’re all happy. It’s a great accomplishment.”
Arellano first ran the race in 1984. He is 60 and persuaded his daughter to run it with him, not knowing how many more years he’ll be able to compete, he said.
And this year, runner’s had more to contend with than the punishing uphill and downhill route.
A significant storm front came through Boise on Saturday, with temperatures hovering around 40 degrees. Graupel and gusty winds awaited runners. About 1 p.m., it was pouring rain at the finish line, and racers experienced snow, sleet and ice along the course.
“It’ll be something to talk about,” Arellano said beforehand.
Jeff Pickett, who moved to Boise in January, said before the race that he was excited about the dismal forecast.
“It’s a great equalizer,” he said. “Sometimes when it gets a little nasty out, it makes it even more fun.”
Historically, the race has been extremely popular. In past years, over 2,000 bib numbers have sold out in under 10 minutes. The race was canceled in 2020, and a virtual version was held in 2021.
This year, race organizers had a bit more difficulty getting people to sign up and extended the registration period. Close to 1,500 people registered, a lower number than usual that Devitt said may have been in part due to the organizers’ decision to require vaccination against COVID-19 for entry.
Devitt said the organizers took COVID-19 precautions seriously, meeting with Idaho’s epidemiologist, Dr. Christine Hahn, to determine how to hold the race safely.
Initially, masks were required at the race start and finish. Earlier this month, race organizers changed that requirement to a recommendation as COVID-19 transmission rates have fallen in the Treasure Valley. But masks were still required on the buses that ferry runners from Robie Creek back to Boise, Devitt said.
“We want people coming away from this with good memories and sore legs, not a virus,” he said.
On race day, Devitt said he would be glad if 1,000 people ran the race, which also had the challenge of competing with a ski resort. Bogus Basin Mountain Recreation Area, the ski area an hour north of the city, reopened for a day on Saturday after snowstorms this month dropped more than 20 inches of snow on the mountain.
‘The sweetest running memory of my life so far’
In a downpour, Jackson Brill crossed the finish line at Robie Creek a few minutes after 1:15 p.m., wearing a soaked tank top and a rainbow headband.
The 23-year-old knows the course well, having first run the race when he was 12. He began running 5-kilometer races when he was 5 with his father, he told the Statesman, but it was the Robie Creek race that made him a runner.
Brill moved back to Boise recently after finishing college at the University of Colorado Boulder, and Saturday’s run was his sixth time competing at Robie.
Though he began running years before, he said the Robie Creek races shaped his relationship with running, which led him to the track and cross country teams at Boise High School and to become the semi-professional runner he is now.
“This is a dream come true,” he said. “To be a small part of the race’s history now as a winner is probably the sweetest running memory of my life so far.”
Brill ran the race in around 1 hour, 18 minutes, while runners Greg Montgomery and Drew Schultz took second and third place. In 2019, Brill took third and Montgomery finished first, according to the Competitive Timing results.
Brill wore micro-spikes on his road running shoes during the mile-long stretch with snow along the downhill part of the race, after the summit, he said. He also said there was snow on the course on the way uphill, near the peak.
Megan Rolland, the women’s first-place finisher, said the course was “pretty gnarly” around the summit and near the finish line, when runners were pelted with sleet and rain. She told the Statesman she summited the peak nearly neck-and-neck with the second- and third-place finishers before she “recklessly descended on the downhill, knowing that the only way I was going to be able to win was just to throw caution to the wind and just go for it.”
This year was her first time running the course, which she finished in around 1 hour, 31 minutes.
“I just crossed my fingers and hoped that I didn’t fall,” she said, adding that she was impressed with the other runners.
“It’s tough conditions, but everyone I passed had a huge smile on their face.”
Devitt, the race director, said this year’s weather forecast was the worst he’s yet seen on race day. But the race organizers aren’t aiming for an easy course. Over the years, multiple people have suggested the race should start at the creek and finish in Boise, which would make the race easier to run and less logistically complex, he said.
“But this isn’t the race to Fort Boise, it’s the race to Robie Creek,” he said. “So it will forever start at noon and it will forever go this direction, even though it makes no sense. That’s the point.”
This story was originally published April 16, 2022 at 6:49 PM.
