Chris Kostman had been involved with endurance events in Death Valley for more than ten years before he took the reins of the Badwater® 135, considered by many to be the world’s toughest footrace. “I’d first heard about the race around 1990 and was invited to participate in 1991,” he recalled. “I ended up having to cancel, as the timing conflicted with a triathlon I was organizing in Canada. Not long after, I took on the management of an ultra-cycling event in Death Valley. I was intrigued that there was such a dramatic, desolate landscape in Southern California that so few people knew anything about. We did some cross-promotion of the cycling event and the Badwater 135. I ended up taking over the running event in 2000. At that point, it was really an underground race. There was no website, no media coverage, and no formal application process. The previous organizers weren’t interested in considering athletes who couldn’t speak English. I made a number of changes, including opening the event up to foreign participants, launching badwater.com, and developing the selection process. That first year, all six top finishers were from other countries, and now we average twenty countries represented each year. The Badwater 135 has become the de facto Olympics of endurance running events.”
While there are races that have more elevation gain and descent, there are no events that have greater extremes in elevation levels or temperature than the Badwater 135 . . . and the distance certainly puts it in a class by itself. Beginning in Death Valley at Badwater Basin (282 feet below sea level and the lowest point in North America), the Badwater 135 winds its way west to its terminus at the Whitney Portal at 8,360 feet (which is the trailhead to Mount Whitney, the highest point in the contiguous United States at 14,505 feet). En route, it crosses three mountain ranges while gaining more than fifteen thousand feet in elevation. (The route is frequently bracketed by mountains reaching elevations of more than eleven thousand feet.) To make what would be an amazing feat of endurance even more taxing, the Badwater 135 is held in July, when daytime temperatures can reach 120 degrees and nighttime temps can reach almost freezing at the finish line. Most of the hundred-odd runners who participate swathe themselves in white clothing to help reflect the relentless heat and protect them from sunburn. Since the air is warmer than your body, any breeze will increase your body temperature rather than decrease it, so complete coverage acts as insulation. (Acclimatizing to the heat is a key part of the preparation for the event; some will go as far as to run in a sauna.)
Extreme high temperatures, huge elevation swings, and sheer length make the Badwater 135 Ultramarathon one of America’s toughest endurance races.
“One competitor, Frank McKinney, has called the Badwater ‘running on the white line from hell to heaven,’” Chris continued. “You’re going from the bowels of the hottest place on earth, where there’s very little life, to mountains that are lush and green with an abundance of life. It’s an incredible contrast. It’s always so humbling to be out there in such an intense, dramatic landscape. It reminds you that we’re just tiny little things in the blip of time.”
The Badwater 135 route was first covered as a hike in 1969 by Jim Burnworth and Stan Rodefer. It was first run by Al Arnold, who’s been called the “Edmund Hillary of ultramarathons.” Al’s first two attempts, in 1974 and 1975, were unsuccessful. But in 1977, he completed the course in roughly eighty hours . . . including the final segment on Whitney Portal Road, which climbs five thousand feet over thirteen miles. It was another ten years before the Badwater was organized as an official event. (In 2016, there were ninety-seven starters and eighty-four official finishers. As of this writing, the Badwater 135 men’s record is 21:56:32, set by American Pete Kostelnick in 2016; the female record, 25:53:07, was established by American Alyson Venti in 2016.)
The race begins in the early evening. “Every year at the start, I announce, ‘Whatever you do, don’t think about the 135 miles of scorching desert terrain between here and the finish line,’” Chris said. “There’s extreme variation along the whole route, and almost any kind of weather is possible. We’ve had rain, floods, wind- and sandstorms, even forest fires. Many are enamored with the ginormous sand dunes adjoining the road as you head into Stovepipe Wells. Towne Pass is also memorable—a seventeen-mile uphill, where you gain five thousand feet. Though it’s not even halfway through, if runners can conquer this, they often feel they can finish. One thing that strikes you out there is the utter isolation of the place. It’s seventeen miles before you reach the first intersection, another twenty-five miles to the next building, then eighty more before you reach anything faintly resembling civilization. I think of it as chasing the horizon. You’ll see a landmark in the far distance, and it will take half a day to get there . . . and then you’re on to the next horizon. Dean Karnazes won the Badwater in 2004. He likes to say that he didn’t win, but ‘survived it the fastest.’ ”
The extreme distance and conditions make setting up aid stations along the route impractical at best. “If we did, the volunteers might die,” Chris said, only half-jokingly. Instead, each participant has a crew or support team (two to four members) that leapfrogs the runner along the course in a vehicle. “They’ll provide food and water, spray runners to cool them down, deal with blisters, provide sunscreen and clothing changes,” Chris explained. “It’s almost as grueling as running, as you’re jumping in and out of the car every mile or two. Most crews don’t even bother running their air-conditioning. It’s a team effort that gets each runner to the finish line.”
Adversity can often breed camaraderie, and that certainly seems the case with the Badwater 135. “We could easily fill the race each year with veterans from previous races,” Chris opined. “It becomes part of participants’ identities. If they’re not running, they’re volunteering or serving on someone’s crew. Three hundred of the same people are there every year. There’s a sense of a Badwater family. Everyone is cheering for everybody else. People are constantly proving that human spirit and potential are limitless. We’ve had runners complete the race with prosthetic limbs. One runner—Art Webb—finished fourteen years in a row and got his best time the fourteenth year, at age seventy.”
Chris will always recall an example of the Badwater spirit from 2009. “A man named Oswaldo Lopez had served on the support team for a winning racer named Jorge Pacheco,” he shared. “In 2009, Oswaldo joined him in the race. Jorge was in the lead on the second big climb toward Lone Pine, but suddenly he wasn’t feeling well. He went to rest in his support vehicle. Oswaldo approached. When he learned what was happening, he ran to the van and dragged Jorge out and told him, ‘You’ve got to keep going. You’ve got to run with me.’ At some races, the guy in second would blast by the leader. To see Oswaldo stop was just fantastic.”
CHRIS KOSTMAN is the chief adventure officer at AdventureCORPS® Inc. and the race director of the Badwater Ultra Cup. He got his start early in ultra sports: He set world ultra-cycling records in high school in 1984 and 1985 (riding against the clock from San Francisco City Hall to Los Angeles City Hall) and completed the 3,127-mile, eleven-day Race Across America bicycle race at age twenty in 1987. That was a springboard to competing in events as diverse as the Triple Ironman in France, the 6.5-mile Skaha Lake Ultra Swim in Canada, three hundred-mile snowshoe races in Alaska, and scores of twenty-four-hour mountain bike races and two-hundred-mile or longer road bike races. This led to a career producing some of the toughest endurance events available through his company, AdventureCORPS Inc. These include the world-famous Badwater 135 Ultramarathon footrace and its sister events, Badwater Salton Sea and Badwater Cape Fear, plus international events in China, Nepal, and Namibia. Chris has also published more than 250 articles about the endurance world. He is trained and educated as an archaeologist and works part-time in that field, both undersea and on land in the Middle East and South Asia. Learn more about Chris at chriskostman.com.
If You Go
Getting There: Las Vegas is the closest major airport to both Furnace Creek and Lone Pine.
Best Time to Visit: The STYR Labs Badwater 135 is held in mid-July each year.
Race Information: The Badwater 135 accepts applications for the race in late January each year. A maximum of one hundred participants (who’ve completed at least three hundred-mile races) will be accepted. For details, visit badwater.com.
Accommodations: Event planners block rooms at Furnace Creek Ranch (760-7862345; furnacecreekresort.com) for before the event; several options are available in Lone Pine (near the finish line), including the Best Western Plus Frontier Motel (760-876-5571; bestwestern.com).
