The North Fork Trail Race is run entirely on trails on the Front Range of the Rockies, just 40 miles southwest of Denver.  The course is in the beautiful Buffalo Creek Recreation Area in the Pike National Forest, starting and finishing at Pine Valley Ranch Park in Pine, Colorado.   The course is hilly and it is very challenging for those who are not experienced mountain trail runners, but speedsters who are used to altitude find the course quite runable.  The friendly aid stations, beautiful scenery and generous time limits make North Fork an excellent choice for a first trail ultramarathon.    Come join us on June 30!! 

Registration will open on January 15 on Ultrasignup. 
The fee for the 50K will be $75 and the 50 Mile will be $85.  Add $15 after June 1.

    
The North Fork Volunteer Fire Department, the beneficiary of the proceeds from the race, protects the area where the race is run.  They have valiantly battled a number of fires in recent years that have changed the landscape, opening up broad vistas of the high country, as you see in the photo above, and giving birth to new growth. 

You will run through some of the burn areas, as well as through pristine forests of ponderosa and lodgepole pines dotted with fields of wildflowers.  Be sure to check out the photo gallery by clicking "photos" in the far upper lefthand corner of this page.  The course is 100% trails, mostly single track and some double track, with mostly good footing, at altitude ranging from 6,700 to 8,100 feet.  Elevation gain is about  4,500 feet for 50K and 7,200 feet for 50 miles.


Photo Gallery


VOLUNTEERS

If you won't be running the race in 2012, please join us as a volunteer.  We need a volunteer to be captain of the 31-mile Pine Valley aid station, and we need volunteers to help at several aid stations.  If you want to help and get a run in, you can volunteer to mark the course on the day before the race, to check course markings on race day, or to sweep the course after the last runners.  We need a lot of volunteers to help at the start, to help with the fabulous post-race barbecue and to manage the finish line.  Please email the race director at northfork50@live.com  to volunteer.


Thank you to all our wonderful 2011 volunteers:  Rebekka Higgs, who prepared the food for the barbecue the day before she ran the 50K; Tony and Esme Delange and Jack Tatum, assisted by Kate Buffington and Sandy Roche, who manned the barbecue all day; our aid station captains--Ryan Kircher (Homestead), Steve McClung (Buffalo Creek), Todd Duncan (Shinglemill), Patrick Cole (Pine Valley) and Todd Salzer (Sandy Wash) and their helpful and enthusiastic crews; Brian Manley, Conan Blakemore, Ron Perkins, Carol Bruce, Jeff Vieyra and Lee and Wini Jebian who marked the course; Ron Perkins, Carol Bruce, Jenny and Kayleigh Woolley, Konna Parker, Angela Chambliss, Tom Masterson, Holly Whelan, Kurt Kinderwater, Lisa and John Cloutier, Ashley Waddell and Mike Patrizi who did all the work on race day including check-in, parking, finish, set-up and breakdown of all the equipment and supplies and everything else that needed doing; and Phil Purdy and Todd Gangelhof who swept the course.  And last but not least, Tom O'Connell who helps constantly with strategy, assembled and distributed all the aid station equipment and supplies, and resupplied the aid stations and did troubleshooting for nearly 18 hours on raceday.   You all made it possible.  
    

Janice O'Grady
Race Director
(303) 903-3533
northfork50@live.com