Ennis, Montana is a city of about 800 people -- fly fishing capital of the northwest -- out in the middle of nowhere.
1. expo/packet pickup -- there is no expo --- packet pickup at a bar in town pretty easy and race day pickup
2. The City -- Hotels -- most all hotels are for fishermen and cater to that clientele -- as far as runners -- there is NO late check out --- the resturatants -- mostly just bars with food -- some are friendly, some are not so friendly --- one little diner we went to was very unfriendly and the waitress yelled at customers (apparently she had had a bad day)
3. Starting line --- parking at the pickup point is easy -- bus ride to the starting line is a little scarey and takes about 1 hour --- goes up the mountain - a bad dirt road --- oh and thats the road we ran down
4. course --- starts high on the mountain about 7500 ft elevation and goes up to about 8600 ft --- then runs about 7500ft up and down for 10 miles then drops about 1000 ft with the last 2 miles being flat --- sceney was great -- air was very thin and hard for me to breath ( I live at 600ft) -- water stations were water jugs on tables about every 2-3 miles ---
5. finish line -- when we got to the finish line there as no one there --- if not for a really great Volunteer following us and picking up the water tables we would have been 13.1 miles from town --- our half would have been a full --- he took us into town and the RD(he is a really nice guy) accepted our time from our runkeeper as our official time (thank you) -- the RD talked with the HM finish line people and apparently thought all the HM'ers had finished ---
Well we did it!!! our first HM at altitude --- really rough and mostly a walk -- signs along the course -- BE BEAR AWARE!! -- they did see a bear the day before on the Madison marathon course
overall if you want a mountain altitude run with great scenery on better than a trail but still a bad dirt road run THIS would be a good one to do --- being a low lander -- I probably wont go back but there were alot of runners from the area that really liked this one ---
I give high fives to the RD and his really great Volunteer that gave us a ride to town --- I found out He has no help putting on these races and does it for the love of the run -- very few sponsors and little money ---
As advertised === THIS AINT NO PANSY ASS CITY RUN