Scott Jenkins Bigfoot 200

Bigfoot 200 is a 209.5 mile race hosted by Destination Trail that takes places through the Cascade Mountains of Washington State. This year Scott Jenkins was the first Welshman to complete the race. But it didn’t come without hardship…

So, what’s your history with Bigfoot 200?

Last year it’s fair to say that the Bigfoot beast got the better of me

In 2021 I went to run the Bigfoot 200. It’s a 200 mile point to point race in the Pacific Northwest with 47,000 ft of elevation gain, and a significant amount of decline too. It’s just a race that goes up and down for 209 miles. Last year it’s fair to say that the Bigfoot beast got the better of me. I signed up to do it 2 and a half weeks after successfully completing the Badwater 135 ultramarathon over in Death Valley. Two completely different races, hard in different ways. For Bigfoot I got up to the Pacific Northwest 2 days before it started and made a tonne of mistakes. I left my water bladder back in London and didn’t give myself enough time to acclimatise to the right altitude. Long and short of it, I was dehydrated, picked up an IT band injury, got sleep deprived and ended up DNFing.

I ran 160 miles into the race on a notoriously difficult section called Klickitat. It’s an old, overgrown Native American trail through the mountains. Sasquatch defeated me, so this year I went back again. I guess what was so special was the search for some redemption. The biggest thing you can take from failure is the lessons. You have to ask yourself why you failed so you don’t make those mistakes again. The nice thing for me going into Bigfoot was applying those lessons and overcoming them. 

I was out there in the middle of nowhere, way over the elevation of Ben Nevis in the middle of the night. There’s no way they’d let you do that in the UK. 

Well lesson learnt, this year you completed it

I did successfully complete the race this time, all 206 miles of it, and it’s brutal. I would classify it as one of the hardest I’ve taken on. In other races there are certain climbs that you know are going to be difficult. Whereas in this race every section has got a challenge in it and they don’t stop coming. In 2021 it was about 42 degrees, fortunately this year it was around 32 degrees. During the second section of the race you’re exposed at Mount St. Helens which is notoriously difficult to climb in the heat. You’re climbing 5000 ft of elevation in 20 miles on overgrown trails. And that’s not just one section, that’s pretty much every section. It’s pretty challenging and a very technical terrain. 

There are a number of difficult climbs in Klickitat where you’re getting bashed in the face by branches. There’s one climb where I was coming up, it’s well over 5000 ft and it was two or three in the morning and I fell on my butt and nearly fell off the cliff. I was out there in the middle of nowhere, way over the elevation of Ben Nevis in the middle of the night. There’s no way they’d let you do that in the UK. Whereas in the States, they’re telling you to get after it. It’s a very difficult race and it’s definitely one that anyone looking for a significant running challenge should look out for.