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The Steep Stuff Podcast
The World Skyrunner Series has Returned to the United States
Breaking news rarely hits mountain running like this. The World Skyrunner Series is officially returning to the United States, and the Beast of Big Creek on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula is the stage. We dive straight into what makes this 23K course so compelling: sustained grades exceeding 20 percent, a clean up-and-down profile that rewards efficient climbers and fearless descenders, and a summit near 6,000 feet that avoids altitude headaches without losing the punch. With 1.5x points on offer, we make the case for why European stars could cross the Atlantic and why sub-two hours might be in play.
We unpack the “why here” question through logistics and strategy. Seattle’s international access makes travel simple, while the terrain delivers classic skyrunning character without sprawling altitude or complex permitting. Then we zoom out: how ISF certification interacts with the World Series, the signals from Whiteface and Broken Arrow, and whether a U.S. skyrunning series is waiting in the wings. We compare philosophies too, contrasting Golden Trail’s media-friendly flower loops with skyrunning’s traditional aesthetic lines and discussing why a tighter global calendar could sharpen competition and improve storytelling.
This is also a conversation about athlete pathways. If more U.S. events gain certification, short-trail standouts, collegiate converts, and VK specialists can build toward European icons like Matterhorn and Trofeo Kima without crossing oceans for every test. We talk rumors, real implications for the Northeast and Pacific Northwest scenes, and how brands and athletes might respond if skyrunning gains momentum here. Hit play to catch our hot takes, practical race analysis, and the questions that will define the next phase of American mountain running. If you enjoy the show, follow, share with a trail friend, and leave a quick review—what race should be the next U.S. skyrunning stop?
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Welcome back to the Steep Stuff Podcast. I'm your host, James Lauriello, and today I'm so excited to be joined by frequent co-host Nick Tusa for a special podcast that's right, an emergency show. This one specifically because the World Skyrunner series is back in the United States for the first time since 2019. So it demanded a conversation. The Beast of Big Creek 23K race on the Olympic Peninsula of Washington has just been announced, and I thought it was definitely something worth conversating about. We don't just talk about this race, we speculate on what else the USA Skyrunning is going to possibly announce throughout the rest of the next few weeks, maybe into the new year. We do dissect this race in its entirety. We talk about its elevation gain. We talk about all different kinds of things. It's definitely fun. And like I said, there's a lot of speculation on what's to come and uh if we think this is going to be a successful go or not. I think it's all exciting stuff either way, and uh definitely demanding of a conversation. So without further ado, I hope you guys enjoy this one. Uh World Sky Running Chat on the Beast of Big Creek with Nick Tusa.
SPEAKER_01:Ladies and gentlemen, we on the All right, boom.
SPEAKER_00:Nick Tusa, welcome back to the Steep Stuff Podcast. It's been a minute, dude. How are you?
SPEAKER_01:Dude, it has uh I'm amazing. Even more amazing hearing this news that we're about to talk about. I know. It's pretty exciting stuff.
SPEAKER_00:We are on the pod right now for an emergency podcast. This is the first of its kind. I've never done anything like this before. But I think this news, I feel like I significantly dropped the ball on uh Broken Arrow. And but like Free Trail covered it, and then it was on like every other thing. So I was like, all right, we're gonna cover this. We're gonna be the first on this one, at least. Um, so yeah, big news. Uh, the US or World Skyrunning Series is coming back to the United States for the first time since 2019. Uh named the Beast of Big Creek. It's gonna be the race. Um, set on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington. You know what's funny, dude? I gotta ask him, I don't know if this was like legit or not, but I wonder if this was like a um if some people knew about this going in that were not affiliated with the Skyrunner series. The only reason I say that is because I was listening to a single track episode a minute ago, um, and it was uh and it was Jeff um Cole? Yeah, Jeff Cole. And he said something about doing like a racing series or like that's the place for skyrunning. And so either it was like a massive coincidence or he knew it. He was just like dropping a hint. So I don't know. I feel like um the other thing, too, that I find really funny about this is uh we had kind of known that Beast of Big Creek had some sort of affiliation on the USA Skyrunning site, they were an ISF affiliated course, so I immediately kind of had an idea. I asked around to a bunch of people trying to do some investigative journalism. Uh, nobody could give me a straight answer, or everybody kind of refused to give me a straight answer. And sure as shit, Corey Woltering accidentally spilled the beans last night, so I knew a little bit ahead of time, and here we are. So okay, because he's partnered with Merrill, so he had a little insight. Okay, got it, got it. You know what's funny? He thought he said it on the podcast that we recorded, texted me about it, and I was like, no, you never said that. Oh man. So now the now the cat's out of the bag, news is done. Yeah. Uh so what do you think? Uh do you think what do you think about the course? We could talk and go into the uh the nitty-gritty on the course and and everything from there, but so far, like what do you what do you think, man? Especially for someone like that wants to do a race.
SPEAKER_01:100%. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's exciting that it's it's actually a course that you know not a lot of people probably know of. I imagine it's mostly people that are maybe local or in the Seattle area or Washington area that maybe have heard of this um race. I know it's only gone on a handful of times. Um, so it'll be fun to like get a group of people there at a place that they have never been. There's no um no advantage here or anything like that. Um, but yeah, the course is like 14 miles-ish. Uh, I think 22k is what I saw with right around a little over 5,300 feet of gain, so a little under like 2,000 meters. Um great climb, steep. There's not many options in the states here where you're exceeding 20 plus percent grade in races. There's maybe a handful out there, and this is one of them. Um, yeah, the race starts out, a little detail about it. Uh, first like four-ish miles is about like a 10% grade climb, and climbs up to a pretty steep 20 plus percent grade, uh, pretty technical section, and then you're kind of rolling down, and it just looks like a perfect up-down format, peaks out at 6,000 feet. I heard the the peak is beautiful. Um, yeah, it's it's incredible. I mean, I've been wanting personally, and I know a lot of people have have been dreaming of running uh an international sky race, and to have the opportunity to have it somewhat in our backyard is uh is pretty incredible. Um and we found out too that this race is going to be incentivized a little bit. Um, it's going to have 1.5 times the points. So I'm guessing the reasoning for doing that was to get some more people to make the trip over from Europe. So hopefully we get some Euros out there, you know. I would I would love to tow the line with some of them. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I find it really interesting. I think this was a good choice. And the only like a couple of the reasons I'll put that out there is you think about why UTMB bought Speed Goat, right? Well, the obviously location, accessibility, easiness to get to an airport. So I think all of those things kind of click in the same way for a race like this. You're not super far from something like Seattle. So international athletes and just athletes from around the country can come uh fly right in. It's close to the big hub, um, beautiful area. It's not really at altitude. Uh I'm using top 6,000 feet, which I wouldn't classify as really altitude. Obviously at the top, but below is not that big of a deal. Um yeah, I think it checks kind of all the boxes as far as the US. I just find it interesting as to why there, but I guess it makes sense. I I have to be honest with you. I was really as far as like putting my Tim Foyle hat on and speculation cap, like I thought it was gonna be in the Wasatch. I've heard rumblings from different people that there was gonna be a new race somewhere in the Wasatch, and they were looking at permitting and trying to figure that out, and and maybe that still comes to fruition. Um, you know how I feel about the creation of races just for a series. I'm not a big fan of that. Um but that said, um I I think this was a this is something new. This is something different. Like it's got a few years of uh uh I'm curious. Actually, let me piggyback on this one more thing. The the finish times, did you look at some of the finish times? They're actually pretty fast. Like I did, yeah, yeah. Yeah, a little over two hours. Yeah. I feel like that's a fast sky race or relatively fast. But yes, I don't know.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, we'll see. Yeah, I I'm sure I I could see someone even going under two hours, which would be pretty, pretty crazy, but um, but yeah, do we know for sure that that is the course that they're gonna go with the sky race, the quote unquote course? Because they have a separate course as well that ends up being 30k with closer to 2,000 meters, you know, 6,000 plus feet of gain. Um and that seems to be kind of what Skyrunning caters to, kind of that distance. I feel like 22k would maybe be on the shorter side, but yeah.
SPEAKER_00:I don't know. Uh the the race directors are gonna come on on next week. So we'll get more information some more info on that. Uh I I'm just curious to know, like, how the hell did you get like I know it's been a long time coming that we've been trying to get USA Sky, like trying to get Sky Running back in the United States. That said, how the hell did they get the race? Like, of all races, it's kind of an obscure it's a great location, great course. How the hell do they pull that off, though? That's the story I want to know about. Like, how do we get that um get that done? All right, I want to deviate from this a little bit because I'm putting my tinfoil hat on again. Um I did talk to USA Sky Running. I've I invited them on the podcast today to join you uh and and myself, and they turned me down uh because there's more announcements coming. That's all I've been told. That makes me feel like uh there's a national series coming, and I don't want to leak anything because I don't really know, but my that's my guess is that there's gonna be, from what I understand, one to a few more races announced. Now, uh I'm gonna tighten that tinfoil hat down a little bit more. And if I go to USA Sky Running's website, it's pretty straightforward. We've got the Broken Arrow 23K on there, which is now an officially ISF certified course, and the White Face Sky Race in uh the Northeast taking place on July 4th. Guys, could that's the time you want to have this race in July 4th? Anyway, uh and the Whiteface VK. So I feel like there's gonna be more announcements coming. I don't know if they correlate exactly to these ISF certified courses, but these are the only ISF certified courses in the United States. So I would wonder if we are going to be getting an announcement from Broken Arrow in the near distant future when they're ready to announce it, uh, that this would be part of an either a national skyrunning series of some kind, or in whatever way, shape, or form that this is a USA sky running race. Um the same thing with Whiteface. I I think I love Broken Arrow, and it is you know, like it's a very difficult course. There's a lot of like interesting aspects to it. I am more interested to hear more from the Whiteface stuff, just because broken arrow is a lot of fanfare, a lot of people going, like that race in its own right, like it that doesn't really add a ton to broken arrow to me because broken arrow is already popular, already has this allure, it's already amazing and world-class what they put on. But I am curious about Whiteface. Like um, they have a mountain race, they have a sky race, they have a VK. And those the mountain race and the sky race are two different courses.
SPEAKER_01:Yes. Yep. I know they do that typically on weekends where they'll have like a VK as well as the Sky Race option. Um so yeah, I don't know. I'm looking a little bit closer here, and they actually do have it listed. They have like the exact distances inverts. So to go back on what we were chatting about with the beast of Big Creek, it looks like 23k with 1600 meters. So yeah, that's probably the course.
SPEAKER_00:It'd be a fast race too. Like I said, oh yeah. If someone's running 223 on a non-skyrunning year, someone's going under two hours easily on skyrunning year.
SPEAKER_01:The technical level too is stated to be a level one, so I would assume I don't know sky running's criteria for that. I know it can get extremely technical if you're looking at like the races, like the Matterhorn. Um that race is insane. But yeah, yeah, that's so cool.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Um yeah, so uh a couple like thoughts here. I think the first one is uh I'm seeing parallels with Skyrunning to Cirque Series. What did Cirque Series do in 2025? They went to the Northeast and then they went to the Pacific Northwest. What is USA Skyrunning doing, or what is Skyrunning now doing? They're in the Pacific Northwest and now they're in the Northeast. This is a speculation. I don't really know if they're gonna be in the northeast. I wonder why I'm gonna guess that they're in the northeast. Um, I mean, I think there's real pockets of I think there's opportunities in all these different places, obviously, pockets of mountain runners in the Pacific Northwest, um, where there's a large fan base. And I think the same thing in the Northeast. The Northeast trail scene for years and years and years, in my opinion, not only has been slept on, but if you really wanted to, you could do a whole short trail season out there. Yeah, incredible. Yeah. So I yeah, I can't help but speculate that uh the success of the Cirque series might be moving the market a little bit and pushing races to uh to try to contend, which is interesting.
SPEAKER_01:So good luck. Well, I know so we know Golden Trail, they had a national series at one point, which they discontinued, I believe this year was the first year that they didn't have it, 2025. I wonder if they're taking some notes maybe from that their book saying, hey, they don't have it now, maybe we could be the ones to do it. Because I feel like they are essentially they're directly competing with each other. I mean, in a sense, it is a little bit different, but the same.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah, it's really it's it is strange. The uh the national series kind of concept. Like, I don't know why they can just like expand the calendar and put a couple different World Series, like make White or Bro like I don't know how it would work for Broken Arrow to be a World Series race or how like that would work with them. I mean, if there's any race that would be a World Series race in the United States, there's only a few I can think of. Broken Arrow is is one of them, just because infrastructure in place that is a damn well-run event. I think that's in my opinion the American standard when it comes to racing in America, outside of maybe the Rut and a few others. But uh, what Brandon's been able to create there, in my opinion, um like just infrastructure-wise and the course and just everything that you need in place to put on a world-class event, that is what we would do is broken arrow. Like, that's the place to do it. Um, but I don't know. There, dude, so all right, I'll give you some backstory here. And I'll be honest with you, as I I'm still learning this as I go, so if I misspeak, uh, it's because I don't have fully the right information. But I understand there is the World Skyrunner series, and then there's the ISF, which is the International Skyrunning uh not Foundation, ISF Federation Federation, excuse me, thank you. And they're kind of two different things there's the racing series and the world series, but then as far as the ISF goes, the International Skyrunning Federation, this is why I wanted to have people from USA skyrunning on here to help explain this to me. Um, but I understand that that's the governing body, so they're the ones that are gonna come in and say this course um meets the standards of the International Skyrunning Federation, so therefore we can sanction this as a skyrunning race, and therefore I guess the World Series of Skyrunning can hold a held a race on that, if that makes sense. Okay. Um but I still think it's kind of two separate entities, from what I understand. So always does does do they does it is a copacetic, from what I get.
SPEAKER_01:Um that is interesting. I I feel like they would benefit if they were if they were one. Um just because how I see it with like the national series playing out kind of similar to the golden trail side of things where uh people have an opportunity to become known or whatever at these national series events and maybe get the invite out to a couple international events and then get their feet wet there, and then maybe they're fully sponsored, and boom, they have an opportunity. Um I just think they're they're looking for more competition, I imagine. It's yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:No, I agree, I agree. I do find it really interesting too, and uh pretty cool. Um like I said, I think this is the maybe the the flood, like it opens the floodgates for more. And I think it's another thing that we've got really good athletes in the country that do go over there. There's not many of them, but do race at that level over there, and hopefully we can there can more can be done, is what I'm trying to say, to create education for younger athletes coming up uh that might be interested in something like this. Because you gotta remember, it's like especially in America, it's track and field. Once you come off track and field, maybe at the collegiate level, what do you usually do? Usually you're going to a certain space. Yeah. If you want to do something a little bit longer, generally it's straight to the golden trail series. I mean, that's where that's where the sport kind of takes in all of the um talent, if you will, generally. Some do go to skyrunning, but it would be cool if they had an additional option. Like Karin Anderson's a really good example. She's a young gun from uh uh she was at UC, and then I think she went to Mines. And from Mines uh goes and competes at the World Skyrim series. Um Robin, uh, who I just saw on the podcast, Robin's another one who goes over and competes a bunch. Um, so there's people floating around. I just think we need more maybe discussion and education around the subject so that all of the talent just doesn't go straight to Golden Trail. And uh that's that's the unfortunate part. But I don't know. I think the only negative thing from the calendar release that I saw this morning is I'm really bummed Minotaur is not a race on there right now. That sucks because that's a really good race. Now youth skyrunning. See, this is where I get confused because now it's also the youth sky North American sky running final, but it's not a world sky running race. I'm so confused. This is where you lose me. Yeah. Uh get that. Yeah. So we got a gov basically it's like the governing body and then it's like the series, and it's like two separate, kind of a separate separate things. But with their post this morning, Skyrunning and the Sky Running Federation posted that in tandem to put out the calendar for this year. So obviously, we're good eye in tandem. I'm actually on the page right now, so it's not not that good of an observation. Um calendar is as follows: four refugios, the Merrill Andy Sky Race, Acatodales to de North, uh the Calamaro Sky Race, the Penyang Sky Race, the Sky Race de Masin, uh the Ueda Sky Race, Sky Race de Gourge du Tarn, Yarding Sky Race, um, and then a whole bunch leading up to uh Beast of Big and then Matterhorn, Trofo Chemo, which is a bi-annual race. Uh, super excited for Trofo Chemo to come back onto the series. I was excited to see that. Dude, if there's one race that you should do in Europe, that's that's probably the one. You gotta wear a helmet. It's so cool. I know. It's so cool. Uh so and one thing I did notice as well, they cut the calendar down. So the calendar is substantially less races this year, uh, than in previous years, which I think is better.
SPEAKER_01:I think it's better for competition, way better.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, competition. Uh there's gonna be less dilution uh at the top. I think there's it's better for storytelling, um, you know, from a social media perspective and from YouTube to be able to tell the stories of these athletes. Uh, I think it's better all around. I I like that's something I really like from Golden Trail series. It's just I don't know, handful to seven races. Um and they're it's condensed, right? There's a lot more weight put on it. Whereas with the Skyrunners World Series, there's I would say almost less weight put to some races, but yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it's a bummer to only see one North American race on the official calendar.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I would have preferred.
SPEAKER_01:And then one of Mexico or yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, Mexico.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. I wonder, I'm curious how they picked these um these these races that have the 1.5 X points with a red star that's next to them there. I don't know. If they're just trying to get people to certain ones, like there's one in Japan, Argentina, France, and yeah, I don't know. Yeah, it's exciting. It's it's uh This is gonna be a big um I think a big jump for Sky Running after this year. I think I think it's gonna be on a lot more people's map and radar.
SPEAKER_00:Well, I feel like I think in my opinion, uh like Golden Trail is the best game in town right now. And I think that but and I posted this yesterday, and it's not it's not just me that's picked up on this, it's a lot of athletes. You'd be surprised the amount of people that have messaged me and be like, huh. Like this makes sense too. Um just the dilution, it seems like, in Golden Trail, maybe losing a little bit of a luster, like luster than they've had in previous years. Um it seems like there's just a lot of consolidation at the top. Um same athletes seem to be winning, at least on the men's side. There's some mix-up on the women's side, but generally not as much. Um for so long it's been Golden Trail, been the only game in town. It seemed like Skyrunner made a huge push maybe two years ago in 2024. Um, Merrill was more it seemed like when Merrill came on board, more branching out, more athlete signings, more investment. Um, and I think that's been a huge lifeblood for that series and it's helped a ton. Um, but I think if you want to gain traction in the North American audience, yeah, you gotta have more races. Like, so I think that that would make sense to me as to why they're gonna be putting, or I would guess it's at least one more race or a national series of some kind.
SPEAKER_01:And maybe it's just a PLO. Maybe maybe they're doing this, these national series in a few select countries, and they're just seeing how the participation is and and what comes out of it. And if it's good, then it's like, well, let's expand on that. It seems like a no-brainer.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Well, and the thing is too, is like I get where golden trail's going. Like Greg is in love with that flower format. Why? Why do you think? Because he wants to take that the Olympics, right? And be able to pitch that as like the the standard for the Olympic Games when they try to go for sky or trail running. Skyrunning's not gonna be an Olympic sport, like it's it's just it's just too much its own thing. At least I don't think so. It's more uh more part of the soul of the sport, the technical aspect. Like, I I find it to be just completely something completely different. So I would guess that I don't know. Like, I and I don't I'm not really a big fan of the flower format either. I have to be honest. Like, I don't think that that is uh it's the best way maybe of storytelling from a TV perspective. Um, but as far as like just the race experience, like you can't tell me you're gonna take a flower format like Kobe and compare that to something like Trophokema. It's two different worlds, you know. Um athlete said something to me that was very interesting is that you know they felt very strongly that Golden Trail become more of a cross country style race. Was like, whoa. I was like, that I got gears turning in my head. All right, I was like, interesting.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, they're definitely not catering to the runners, they're catering to the media, the exposure to it, the yeah, easiness of doing it, which is unfortunate, but I don't know. I would rather have an aesthetic line that's point-to-point or that's like a perfect loop, or it makes sense, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And I feel like Skyrunning does that pretty pretty well. Um, I feel like they haven't done any any flower format or anything like that. Um their races seem to be very traditional.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Yeah, nothing into the accord of like actually um yeah, it's not like made for TV, you know. No, yeah, we gotta do, we gotta we gotta go do Sky Race day maths in. Like that that's that race looks it does look cool. Uh all right. What do you think? Is there anything we you don't think we didn't hit? I feel like we hit kind of some of the major things, threw some speculation in there, um got some hot takes. Yeah. Anything you want to add to it or you think we got it all?
SPEAKER_01:Uh I think we touched on just about everything. I guess just I know we've been hearing rumblings of this for a while with this North American series, and I guess I had different um a different idea of what that would be, but having this come to fruition and this news coming out, I think this is the best case. Uh I just I didn't expect there to be a um official World Series event here, so it's it's amazing. Yeah.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:I think it's gonna be a dream come true for some people. I think people are gonna finally be able to do their sky race. It's gonna be right.
SPEAKER_00:I the one thing I will say that kind of slipped my mind is I am surprised the Rut is not like an official certified course or a part of it because they were a part of it in 2019, the 28k, um previous years. I um I don't think they give a shit. I think they just want to put on their own and have a good time.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it and and we don't know what having that ISF certified like what does that exactly mean? Like how much power the sky yeah, how much how much the sky running have control over it? Maybe the rut's like, hey, we're our own thing, we don't want to be which is respect to them, it's an incredible race. Um it's the second biggest race control.
SPEAKER_00:We just don't know.
SPEAKER_01:Second behind Broken Arrow?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I think I pretty broken arrow is a little bit bigger. I want to say broken arrow is probably the biggest trail race in the country. I'm I'm pretty sure. And I would say if they're the biggest, then rut's the second biggest. Something like that. I mean, you're saying thousands of people. Pikes is uh how many people are I should know this. Uh I literally just looked at the numbers like two days ago. I think we have 1900. A couple thousand nineteen hundred in the ascent or two thousand. Short of two thousand. So it's close. I'd say, but as many races, you know. Um we'll see if that changes. But yeah. Yeah, but uh all right, man.
SPEAKER_01:Paul, it was a pleasure. I'm glad we got to break this neoze together. It's super exciting, and I appreciate you having me on to chat about it. Absolutely, dude.
SPEAKER_00:More more unfolding as we go. This is gonna come out uh in I got one more podcast after this, and then this will come out.
SPEAKER_01:I'll be in touch. Sounds good. Hardest working podcaster in the game, everyone. James, heck yeah. Love it.
SPEAKER_00:Awesome. We're good. Sweet. All right, this will just this.
