Distance To Empty

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Moab 240 2026 Course Preview: Every Section, Every Change, with Head Trail Marker Jameson Collins

The Moab 240 starts this week, and we've got a full section-by-section breakdown of the 2026 course. Kevin is joined by Jameson Collins, head trail marker for Destination Trail. Jameson is a two-time Moab finisher and has spent this week out marking the course, so he has current, on-the-ground details on what runners will face.

Kevin and Jameson cover every leg from the arch in downtown Moab, through the desert of Lockhart Basin, up into the Abajos and the La Sals, and back to town. They rate each section from 1 to 5, ski-slope style, so runners know when they're on a green run and when they're on a double black. They also go through what's new this year:

• The start moves back to 6 AM, and they explain the reasoning behind it.
• There's a new 3-liter minimum water carry out of Base Camp, with a 1-liter maximum top-off at the Lockhart water stop. They explain why it exists and how much water you should actually carry.
• Drop bags are now available at Base Camp and the Oasis.
• Bridger Jack is a new sleep station.
• The fire reroute has been cleared. Runners will still pass through burn areas on Shea and the climb from Shea to Monticello Lake.
• Green and yellow crew groups apply at Shea Mountain and Monticello Lake, along with the pacer drop-off rules.
• The final section has a construction detour. Runners now come down through Sand Flats and the Falcon Flow trail and finish by running through downtown Moab.

Along the way you'll hear about the Oasis "mirage," the double climb on Shea, why Road 46 might be the most important aid station on the course, and Jameson's advice for crews: get out and enjoy Moab while you wait.

In the outro, Peter Noyes is back with his top tip for the race (spoiler: sleep at Road 46), a message for runners listening mid-race, a quick round of Let's Get Deep, and some questionable prep for his own 100-miler this weekend.

Chapters (main episode)
00:00 Intro with Jameson Collins
02:46 What's new for 2026
07:03 Rating system and Start → Hidden Valley
12:21 Hidden Valley → Amasa Back
19:53 Amasa Back → Base Camp (Jackson's Ladder)
25:10 Base Camp → Oasis via Lockhart (water carry rules)
33:30 Oasis → Indian Creek
35:40 Indian Creek → The Island
40:56 The Island → Bridger Jack
46:23 Bridger Jack → Shea Mountain
51:40 Green and yellow crew groups explained
55:31 Shea Mountain → Monticello Lake
58:29 Monticello Lake → Dry Valley
1:01:27 Dry Valley → Needles → Road 46
1:05:23 Road 46 → Pole Canyon
1:09:32 Pole Canyon → Geyser Pass
1:14:48 Geyser Pass → Porcupine Rim
1:19:02 Porcupine Rim → Finish (new 2026 route)
1:24:10 Closing advice
Outro: Peter's tips, a message for runners on course, and Let's Get Deep

Support the show and get free swag
Place an order with Mount to Coast using code DISTANCE for 10% off, or order from Janji and select "Podcast → Distance to Empty" at checkout. Then send your receipt screenshot, size, and address to @distancetoemptypod on Instagram or [email protected]. If you order or leave a review while you're out on the Moab course, we'll send you something extra special.

Join our Patreon for the Discord community and bonus content. It's the first link in the show notes.

Good luck out there, Moab runners. Stay in the fight.

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Meet the Mammoths — Bailey Gripshover: The ICU, the PCT, and the Potato Lifestyle

Today's guest spends her working life in a cardiothoracic ICU in Seattle, with patients having the worst days of their lives. When she's not there, she's choosing to suffer on trails — a contrast she says keeps everything in perspective when a race doesn't go the way she hoped.

Bailey Gripshover finished top 10 in her 200-mile debut at Cocodona 250 this past May, and held the lead in the inaugural MBA at Mingus for a while after sinking a shot she fully expected to miss. This October she's back for a second crack at the distance at Mammoth.

We talk about what it's like running these races with a medical background: knowing when to pull the plug on an Arizona Trail FKT attempt because of a swollen Achilles, and also completely botching her own electrolytes at Javelina despite managing electrolyte imbalances at work every single day. She also makes a strong case for being the best-prepared person in the field on sleep — 12-to-14-hour ICU shifts, flip-flopping between days and nights, operating at a high level while exhausted because there isn't another option.

Plus: how hiking the PCT in 2019 introduced her to the idea that people race these distances at all, why the Eastern Sierra is family terrain (her grandpa did the JMT, and she summited Whitney with her mom and sister for her mom's 60th), and her Mammoth 200 video game result — currently second on our leaderboard at 68 hours, after a first attempt where she DNF'd because her feet disintegrated on the pumice. She is now, genuinely, reconsidering gaiters.

In this episode:

• Perspective from the ICU, and why it's "just running"
• When medical knowledge helps, and when it doesn't
• Shift work as accidental sleep-deprivation training
• Four hours of sleep and almost no hallucinations at Cocodona
• A virtual DNF by foot destruction, and a potential gaiter conversion
• Making a basket at Mingus and riding the high
• Her prediction: this will have the best aid station food in ultrarunning
• Peter's preferred potato orientation

Mammoth 200 kicks off Friday, October 2nd in Mammoth Lakes, California. Catch live coverage on the Mountain Outpost YouTube channel, and follow @Mammoth200 for updates and tracking throughout the race.

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Kevin and Peter break down the 2026 Mammoth 200 course, just days before race weekend. Kevin ran the race last year and shares his memories of each section, while Peter, who hasn't run it, serves as emotional support co-host. They cover what's changed for 2026 and go through the course section by section, with difficulty ratings, crew tips, and where things get tough.

What's new in 2026

• Start time is 9 AM, an hour later than last year, and the race is a week later in the calendar
• The course is now billed at 218 miles (up from 214), and the cutoff has been extended to 109 hours
• GU Energy Labs replaces Never Second as the nutrition sponsor, and all aid stations are cupless
• Duck Pass (mile 17) is now water only
• The first crew-accessible stop is now CRC at mile 24, about 8 miles sooner than last year's Sherwin Creek
• The longest gap between aid stations is now 15.4 miles (CRC to Convict Lake)
• Crowley Lake has moved to the ball field
• Green Church is now Watterson Summit
• Lee Vining has moved to Gus Hess Community Park, with an outdoor sleep station
• Runners now pass under Highway 395 at the Rush Creek Overpass instead of crossing with a crossing guard
• Walker Lake is now a full aid station
• There's a new water drop at the bottom of the Parker Bench descent
• June Lake Junction replaces Obsidian Dome, and Upper Deadman (Glass Creek) replaces Inyo Craters
• The indoor Main Lodge aid station (mile 207) replaces Minaret Vista, followed by a steeper, shorter climb to the summit

The course by the numbers

• 218 miles, roughly 31,000 feet of gain and loss
• High point of 11,053 feet, with an average elevation around 8,000 feet
• A loop around a caldera roughly 760,000 years old

Section-by-section highlights

• Village to CRC: the Dragon's Back descent is the most technical part of the course
• CRC to Crowley Lake: a hot valley-floor gravel road, then the Convict Lake loop at sunset
• Crowley Lake to Watterson Summit: sandy, punchy double track and the Lion's Den tunnel
• Watterson to Sawmill to Taylor Canyon: some of the hardest miles on the course, with pumice, exposure, and a non-crew aid station
• Taylor Canyon to Crater Mountain: fast, runnable double track through Jeffrey pine forest
• Crater Mountain to Lee Vining: moonscape views, a long descent, and one easy-to-miss turn
• Lee Vining to Upper Deadman: Parker Bench, an overgrown descent, and a steep climb out of June Lake
• The final push: Main Lodge, the summit, and a 3,000-foot descent to the village

Kevin and Peter also share crew logistics, including a reminder to double-check driving directions to Watterson Summit and Crooked Meadows, since Google Maps often gets them wrong. They wrap up with advice for the weekend: be ready for anything the Sierra weather throws at you, and keep troubleshooting.

Important: Always verify details against the current official race and course manual, since changes often happen after recording.

Also mentioned

• The Canal Corridor Hundred on October 10, where Kevin and Peter are running
• The free Oregon Trail-style Mammoth video game (link in show notes)
• The Meet the Mammoth series and last year's course preview with Hillary

Sponsors

• Janji: Order, choose "podcast" then "Distance to Empty" on the post-purchase survey, and send us a screenshot for free Distance to Empty swag.
• Mount to Coast: Use code DISTANCE for 10% off.

Support the show: Check out our Patreon for coaching options (first link in the show notes).

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Meet the Mammoths — Amber Weibel: Second Place, and Back for More

Amber ran her first official 200-mile race last year at Mammoth and finished in 55 hours and 40 minutes, second place female. She holds fastest known times on both the Tahoe Rim Trail and the John Muir Trail. And with one week to go until the 2026 race, she's back.

Amber Weibel joins us to talk about picking Mammoth because it let her kids finish out their school week before driving down to crew — a genuinely practical reason that says a lot about where she is in her life right now. She describes what a race feels like after years of unsupported FKTs, where nobody is waiting at the next aid station and the energy bump of seeing family simply doesn't exist. Mammoth, she says, was strangely hard, and her husband had never seen her in a low quite like the one she hit on night two.

We get into the question that's been nagging at us since we researched this episode: she's run the Tahoe Rim Trail both supported and unsupported, and the crewed version was only 22 minutes faster. Her answer is about what a level playing field actually looks like, and why she'd rather be in the wilderness on her own.

She also explains the lie she told herself all the way around the Mammoth course last year, her path from cyclist to Ultraman world champion to trail running, why she'll happily spend four minutes changing shoes to avoid blisters, and her Mammoth 200 video game result — which she'll admit came after a first attempt she describes as embarrassingly slow.

In this episode:

• Picking a race that fits around an 8- and 9-year-old's school week
• Unsupported FKTs versus a supported 200, and what changes
• Twenty-two minutes: what a crew is actually for
• The lie she kept telling herself at Mammoth last year
• Four pairs of shoes, zero blisters
• A 105-hour first attempt at the video game, and a much better second
• Her non-placement goal: showing her kids what working through hard things looks like
• A weather prediction from someone who got caught in lightning on the second summit

Mammoth 200 kicks off Friday, October 2nd in Mammoth Lakes, California. Catch live coverage on the Mountain Outpost YouTube channel, and follow @Mammoth200 for updates and tracking throughout the race.

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Meet the Mammoths — Gabe Joyes: 200-Mile Curious, Properly Intimidated

Today's guest has raced almost everything this sport has to offer. Gabe Joyes has been top 10 at Hardrock, runner-up at HURT 100 this past January, and finished the Dragon's Back Race, the 240-mile stage race across Wales. He's a coach at Uphill Athlete and a race director himself. What he's never done is a continuous, single-push 200 — until this October.

Gabe joins us to explain why he's been "200-mile curious" for years but properly intimidated, and why the Mammoth course was the one that finally got him to sign up. He also has a compelling theory about what these races actually are: not eating competitions, but problem-solving competitions, where the plan holds for some unknown number of hours and everything after that is jazz.

We also get into something few runners have had to reckon with. A few years ago Gabe fell on his trekking pole while running downhill fast, nearly bled to death on the trail, and was helicoptered to a hospital. He talks openly about how long it took to move past that, why he still uses poles, and the one rule he's never broken since: he does not run downhill with them out. Ever.

Plus: sleep strategy after a 47-hour unsupported Wind River High Route push that went sideways past hour 40, a refreshingly honest answer about having six shoes still in contention a month out, and the single best homework excuse of the series — Gabe outsourced his Mammoth 200 video game playthrough to his 11- and 14-year-old kids, who ran five or six attempts, posted times between 88 and 96 hours, and logged exactly one DNF.

In this episode:

• Why Mammoth was the course worth breaking the 200 seal for
• Plans, chaos, and treating a race as a problem-solving competition
• The trekking pole accident, and how he uses poles now
• Caffeine, hallucinations, and what happens past hour 40
• Six shoes, one month out, zero decisions made
• Homework delegated to the kids (a 100% honest disclosure)
• His non-placement goal: making sure his crew has a good time
• A prediction about the stories that'll come out of race weekend

Mammoth 200 kicks off Friday, October 2nd in Mammoth Lakes, California. Catch live coverage on the Mountain Outpost YouTube channel, and follow @Mammoth200 for updates and tracking throughout the race.

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Meet the Mammoths — Jake Jackson: Round Two

Today's guest is no stranger to this distance. Jake Jackson finished the inaugural Mammoth 200 last September, has run Cocodona more than once, and is a husband, a father of three, and a UPS driver — who is, for the record, recording this episode from his truck on his lunch break.

Jake joins us to talk about what it's like standing on that start line the second time, knowing exactly what the course is going to do to you. He also had a front-row seat to one of Kevin's worst falls in ultrarunning, around mile 11 coming off Mammoth Mountain, and describes watching the whole thing unfold in slow motion.

He's honest about last year: stomach issues on night one that wrecked his nutrition plan, running the whole thing solo without crew or pacers, and seeing Mono Lake and Obsidian Dome entirely in the dark. He finished — but says he's yet to complete a 200 and feel like he actually nailed it, rather than dragging a dead body across the line. This year he's going solo again, and the goal is to finish feeling accomplished instead of just finished.

Plus, the best homework story of the series: Jake emailed his game result at 3:52pm, then emailed better game results four hours later after knocking it down to sub-70 — and admits it was eating at him at work all afternoon. He also discovered that running as an influencer is faster than running as an elite athlete, mostly because he refused to stop for photos.

In this episode:

• Knowing too much versus knowing nothing on a start line
• Kevin's slow-motion fall on the Dragon's Back descent
• Night one stomach problems and a solo race in the dark
• Why he's never finished a 200 feeling like he got it right
• A training block he's honest about, and why that might be a good sign
• Three game attempts, two emails, and a sub-70 finish
• H1s last year, M1s this year
• A prediction squarely aimed at aid station food

Mammoth 200 kicks off Friday, October 2nd in Mammoth Lakes, California. Catch live coverage on the Mountain Outpost YouTube channel, and follow @Mammoth200 for updates and tracking throughout the race.

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Meet the Mammoths — Elliot Chisholm: 18 Years Old, Two Cocodonas, and a First 200 Ahead

Today's guest has been on this podcast before. So has his whole family. Elliot Chisholm hiked the Appalachian Trail, the Pacific Crest Trail, and the Continental Divide Trail with his mom and three brothers — the full Triple Crown — before most people his age have a driver's license. He's 18, and as far as we can tell, the youngest entrant in this year's Mammoth 200. He's also still looking for his first 200-mile finish.

Elliot joins us to talk about how the family stumbled into this sport in 2023, watching Cocodona from afar with a friend and realizing that a race combining running and fast hiking was exactly what they'd already been doing across the country.

He's honest about both Cocodona attempts: going into 2025 sick at sixteen, throwing up everything he ate, and dropping somewhere past Crown King. Then coming back in 2026, getting his sodium badly wrong, developing rhabdo, and having his body shut down at mile 150 even as his mind wanted to keep going. Forty-something miles to a hundred and fifty in a single year — and a lot learned about nutrition and problem-solving along the way.

Mammoth is different: he's blazing the trail for his family this time, nobody's run it before him. He talks about training for runnable terrain instead of the jagged White Mountains he trains on in New Hampshire, heading to altitude from 400 feet of elevation, and why he plans to start the race in road shoes.

Plus: his virtual Mammoth 200 finish of 73 hours currently sits third on our leaderboard, his brother Asher helped him make decisions along the way, and he's pre-committed to the Mammoth Basketball League.

In this episode:

• The Triple Crown, and finding ultrarunning by accident
• Two Cocodona DNFs, a stomach bug and a case of rhabdo
• Why Mammoth, and blazing a trail ahead of his family for once
• Training for runnable terrain in the White Mountains
• Sea-level kid heading to altitude
• Third place on the game leaderboard
• A prediction: questioning every decision that led him to the start line — and looking forward to it

Mammoth 200 kicks off Friday, October 2nd in Mammoth Lakes, California. Catch live coverage on the Mountain Outpost YouTube channel, and follow @Mammoth200 for updates and tracking throughout the race.

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Meet the Mammoths — Jill Dennes: Thirteen Hundreds, and Now the Next Thing

Today's guest is a personal trainer and ultrarunning coach out of Nashville who has quietly built one of the more impressive résumés on the Eastern trail circuit — a runner-up overall finish at the Black Hills 100, a start at UTMB last year, and wins and podiums up and down the East. She's run roughly thirteen hundred-milers. She has never gone 200 miles in a single push. That changes this October.

Jill Dennes joins us to talk about why, after that many hundreds, the 200 felt like the only thing left to try — and the refreshingly honest reason she picked Mammoth: it had the shortest waitlist, so she got in first. (Naturally, she then got off almost every other waitlist she was on.)

We get into what UTMB taught her, including a race that started in light rain and turned into a full blizzard, and why a Pennsylvania upbringing on "Rocksylvania" trails still didn't prepare her for Chamonix. She also talks about practicing what she preaches as a coach: consistency, strength training three to four days a week, and the simple rule of getting the race on the calendar so the training actually happens.

For a first 200, her approach is proudly loose. She barely studies the course, doesn't have a sleep plan, has never really hallucinated, and is heading from Nashville's roughly 500 feet of elevation to the Sierra. She's winging it on purpose — and explains why expectations can do more harm than good.

Plus: a former high school point guard enters the Mammoth Basketball League, asks whether made shots come with time bonuses, and reveals a sweet tooth that may be the most dangerous thing in her crew bag.

In this episode:

• Thirteen hundreds, and why the 200 was the natural next step
• Picking Mammoth for the shortest waitlist
• UTMB, a mid-race blizzard, and preparing for anything
• Coaching consistency, strength work, and getting it on the calendar
• No sleep plan, no hallucinations yet, and a sea-level runner heading to altitude
• Homework not done, and a point guard ready for the MBL
• Finish-line firsts: pizza, a burger, sour candy, and a shower
• Her non-placement goal: keeping her gut happy for 200 miles

Mammoth 200 kicks off Friday, October 2nd in Mammoth Lakes, California. Catch live coverage on the Mountain Outpost YouTube channel, and follow @Mammoth200 for updates and tracking throughout the race.

⁠⁠⁠⁠Play The Mammoth 200⁠⁠⁠⁠ Video Game!

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Meet the Mammoths — Yassine Diboun: Twenty Years In, One Day at a Time

Today's guest represented the United States at the 2015 IAU Trail World Championships, where his team came home with silver. He's finished Western States multiple times, podiumed at HURT 100, and just completed his 20th hundred-miler at Bighorn this past June. He's also built one of the most respected trail communities in the country through Wy'east Wolfpack in Portland — and he's more than twenty years into recovery from addiction.

Yassine Diboun joins us to talk about why, two decades into this sport, Mammoth is the thing that finally gave him butterflies again. He tells the full story behind a moment at Hardrock in 2023: sprained ankle, deep in a funk on a hot dirt road, when a runner pulled alongside to say he'd heard Yassine talk about his drinking on a podcast and had just hit five years sober. (The runner then dropped him. Yassine passed him back at mile 88.)

We get into the parallels between recovery and ultrarunning — one day at a time, one aid station at a time — plus the origins of Wy'east Wolfpack, and Run TRG, the free running program he built with Portland's Alano Club for people in or seeking recovery. He also describes Move Through Darkness, the December sunset-to-sunrise run he started after a member of the community took his own life, and the year it poured for fifteen straight hours.

Mammoth will be his first 200-mile race, though not his first multi-day effort — he ran the entire Oregon section of the PCT, roughly 450 miles, about a decade ago. Sleep is the thing he genuinely doesn't know about yet, to the point that he's had an anxiety dream about negotiating a nap with his own crew.

Plus: Yassine took our Mingus basketball idea and ran his own version at an aid station in Oregon, where it was such a hit his race directors made it a permanent fixture. He's one of the few guests who arrives already knowing what he's in for — and he's calling his shot for a three-pointer at Mammoth.

In this episode:

• Why a 200 now, after 20 hundred-milers
• The runner at Hardrock, and why he stopped keeping his recovery private
• Wy'east Wolfpack, Run TRG, and Move Through Darkness
• 450 miles on the Oregon PCT and what it did and didn't teach him about sleep
• A dream about convincing his crew to let him sleep
• Basketball at aid stations, and the Mingus idea going national
• A prediction: good weather, sub-60, and a three-pointer

Mammoth 200 kicks off Friday, October 2nd in Mammoth Lakes, California. Catch live coverage on the Mountain Outpost YouTube channel, and follow @Mammoth200 for updates and tracking throughout the race.

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Meet the Mammoths — Cole Crosby: From Pacer to Racer

Today's guest holds the course record for the Vermont 100K and the fastest known time on the 230-mile Bay Circuit Trail around Boston. He's run over 224 miles in 48 hours at Across the Years. And this past July, he became the first Rhode Islander ever to finish Badwater 135 — with Kevin somewhere out on that same course behind him.

Last October, Cole was at Mammoth 200 but not racing it. He was keeping Kevin company late in the race, pacing him through a stretch of not sleeping at all. This year he's on the other side of it.

Cole joins us to talk about what he took from watching a race fall apart in real time, the strange work of transitioning from Badwater's hyper-specific pavement training back into trail legs, and why running punchy, rocky, endlessly up-and-down terrain in Rhode Island may be better Mammoth prep than it sounds.

We also get one of the best video game stories of the series so far: Cole was on pace for a mid-50-hour virtual finish — a time Kevin still hasn't managed — when a pop-up appeared near the second-to-last aid station. He scrolled, tapped without reading, and was immediately disqualified for accepting aid outside an aid station. His wife Ashley, meanwhile, finished in the low 60s on her very first try, which Cole attributes to thirteen years of crewing him.

Plus: the MBA's expansion structure gets formalized (Mingus is the league, Mammoth gets the MBL), Cole reveals a free-throw percentage in the high 80s, and we float a future episode on the psychology of fun in ultrarunning.

In this episode:

• Pacing at Mammoth last year and what it taught him about racing it
• Post-Badwater recovery and getting trail legs back
• Rhode Island training terrain and why it maps well to Mammoth
• The DNF heard round the world: reading the fine print in a video game

• Jerseys, free throws, and the birth of the Mammoth Basketball League
• A course record prediction, and why tactics may matter more than early speed

Mammoth 200 kicks off Friday, October 2nd in Mammoth Lakes, California. Catch live coverage on the Mountain Outpost YouTube channel, and follow @Mammoth200 for updates and tracking throughout the race.