Free. You can start with nothing.
Last runner standing. A new 4.167-mile loop starts every hour, on the hour, with warning whistles at 3, 2 and 1 minute before. You must be in the starting corral when the bell rings, and back inside the hour to start the next. The race ends when one runner has finished one more loop than anyone else. The route is Big Hill Loop A with a .6 mile out-and-back section of Loop D, run counter-clockwise on wide, smooth trails. The start/finish is the high point: each loop goes down in the first half and climbs back in the second.
The race lists 385 ft of elevation gain/loss per loop. Course elevation is 5,200 to 5,400 ft above sea level. Wide, smooth trails that were developed for cross-country skiing, with room to pass side by side. Weather swings: mild September highs in the mid-70s, overnight lows in the 40s, occasional thunderstorms, sudden wind gusts at Big Hill. An average pace of 14:24/mile gets you back in time to start a new loop.
A last-runner-standing backyard ultra at the Big Hill trailhead in the Black Hills National Forest, about 8 miles up Tinton Road from Spearfish, South Dakota. Everyone runs a 4.167-mile loop on trails built for cross-country skiing, starting a new loop at the top of every hour, until one runner has done one more loop than anyone else. A tent at the start/finish serves hot and cold food, and runners set up their own camp spots beside it. It is hosted by the Black Hills Runner's Club and has a 2026 edition on September 12.
Nobody has been out there with a camera or a microphone yet. A gap means nobody has found it, not that it is not out there. Seen a course preview or a film of this one? Send us the link.
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This changes nothing on the page on its own. Somebody checks it against the race first.
Somebody watches it before it goes anywhere near this page. What we are after is footage of this course, on the ground. If it would be just as true of any other race, it is not this.
We want the address of the file the race publishes, not the file. We download it from there so the page can say where the line came from.
We read every one of these and we write back. Every fact here carries the source it came from, and the way a wrong one gets fixed is a person checking it against what you tell us.
Cutoffs move, races get postponed, lotteries open and close. We read the race's own sources and record where every fact came from. Put your email in and we will send you what changed, and where we read it.
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I keep this catalog because the information is scattered and hard to trust. Telling you when it moves is the same job.
