It was the middle of the night, 12:50am on July 19. Darkness hanging over a meadow a few miles south of Buena Vista, there was a lull of tired anticipation. Every year prior, those gathered near the cluster of tents at the finish line hadn’t expected anyone to emerge from the dark until close to 2am. A steady trickle of athletes wouldn’t appear until after dawn.
But Carbondale’s Jeff Colt had hit his stride and finished the climb up from Chalk Creek, past the Mount Princeton Hot Springs, known to racers as Swear Hill. Minutes later, he passed the line, shattering the course record for the High Lonesome 100 ultra-marathon by 50 minutes.
Colt moved to the Roaring Fork Valley in 2016 and ran his first Western U.S. ultramarathon the following year. That 2017 first placement in the forty-mile Grand Traverse Mountain Run, from Crested Butte to Aspen, was an achievement that helped transition his earlier running background to what is now an impressive and consistent running resume. But Colt has been running since elementary school. He describes the activity as a throughline in his life. One he now treats as a daily practice for his mental and spiritual well-being.
“My brother and I started running cross country when we were 10 and 7, respectively,” said Colt in an interview with The Sopris Sun. “We were highly energetic boys and we needed to be run much like border collies. It’s a strange thing to think of 7-year-old me training for running, but I would get out and run four miles, five days a week.” Colt’s father was supportive of the interest, but emphasized to his young sons that if they wanted to race, it was up to them.
Colt grew up in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. He says that the mountains of the Northeast remain a big part of who he is. “I envisioned living in the northern hardwood forests of New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine for the rest of my life — truly getting to know the story of the landscape and being able to read the wrinkles on its face.” But about 10 years ago, he felt a call for change. His sister Robin was living in Carbondale and encouraged Colt to move to the Valley. Colt describes the local scenery as love at first sight: “I first saw Mt. Sopris and have been under her spell ever since.”
The Northeast allowed Colt to build up significant endurance thanks to hiking, in addition to his lifelong running habit. He spent several summers working for the Appalachian Mountain Club at a backcountry hut in the White Mountains, packing in supplies and cooking and cleaning for guests.
“I started looking at the maps differently,” he said, recalling his pastime routine then. “My daily adventures got longer and longer and I tried my best to run some of the region’s historic routes as fast as I could. Years into exploring ultra-distance, I learned that there was a community of runners and races doing this same thing.”
Since 2018, Colt has competed in several ultras each year. His results include many podium finishes and 11th and ninth placings in consecutive years of the prestigious Western States 100 in California (2022 and 2023). He describes his appreciation for the sport philosophically: “I love that running can be as unstructured or as structured as you want it to be. It can be free verse poetry and prose, or it can be iambic pentameter. There is no right or wrong way to run.”
But Colt also enjoys that running involves earning a kind of feeling. “I love that it isn’t easy for the first couple miles of any run and that it takes falling into a rhythm,” he said. And that was true for his record-setting High Lonesome effort, when he recalled feeling off for nearly the first marathon-distance of the race. But, he added, “By mile 24, I found my rhythm and things started to click.” Colt credits some of that smoothness to other racers, and to his pacers during the race. “Ultrarunning is a community sport and I’m grateful for the amazing folks who showed up to support me.”
Colt has been dreaming of racing in the Hardrock 100, based out of Silverton, Colorado. Hardrock has a notoriously competitive lottery, though, so he’s not sure when he’ll finally get to toe that starting line. “This fall, I’m motivated to link up more beautiful trails and ridgelines in the Elk Mountains, with no objective in mind beyond being present.”
Many Roaring Fork Valley athletes raced in this year’s iteration of High Lonesome. Local finishers of the Buena Vista-based hundred miler include Carbondale’s Jack Watson, Aspen’s Madeline Fones, Carbondale’s Heidi Warfel, Woody Creek’s Kelsey Coon and Aspen’s Tessa Dawson. High Lonesome has gained national attention for its gender equity efforts, requiring that half of its 150 race entries go to women and the other to men.