The inaugural Copper Kings 100 was one of only two 100-mile ultramarathons held in Montana this year.

“Well, what’d you see out there?” Chris Peterson, Hungry Horse News editor, asked me, sometime after making it out of the woods.  

“Rocks,” I said. “More rocks, then Mary.”  

I didn’t have much else to say, so Peterson offered some advice.  

“Well, why don’t you write about it?”

So here it goes...  

It was just before 4 a.m. on June 26 when runners gathered at the base of the Belmont Mine in Butte to begin the race.  

Above us was a magnificent steel tower, a black silhouette against a black sky.  

The tower is one of the 13 or so headframes still standing proudly over the town that was once the richest hill on earth.  

Under that tower that was used to hoist miners out of the darkness below, 105 of us poor, sleepy souls strapped our headlamps on.  

We ran out of town, past a few gas stations and onto a rolling country road. We arrived at a trailhead 12 miles later.  

The morning mist was lifting as I swapped my road shoes for trail shoes, ready for the real fun: 88 more miles - 63 on the Continental Divide Trail - plus 15,000 feet or so of vertical gain.  

Soon enough I was climbing up gravelly rocks, flanked by towering boulders stacked like cairns. 

Above, magnificent rocks in the sky humbled me.  

Below, each rock felt like a hammer to the toes. Like a gory princess and the pea, I cursed the smallest of pebbles. 

Every so often, I’d see looming white in the distance, and think, ‘snow!’, knowing all too well, it was in fact not snow, but more rocks, maybe quartz. 

Sand, sweat and blood settled in my socks.  

Nonetheless, sometimes I’d find myself in a forest, where strong-willed trees burst from the rocky ground, and I felt willed to go on.  

And sometimes, I’d find myself in a meadow. No rocks, just long grass and endless sky.  

Here, in meadows near Superfund sites, with miles of underground mines crawling underneath, the land is on the cusp of recovery. 

I saw one deer, a few squirrels.  

Occasionally, I’d find someone to keep pace with. Although strangers, we too would chitter like the nonexistent birds, until we settled into a quiet rhythm of pattering feet and huffing breath. 

Then they would slip away, and it was just you.  

The last bit of sun was glowing on the great statue of Our Lady of the Rockies, Virgin Mary, when I reached her at mile 58.  

I inhaled glorious soup, strapped my headlamp back on and bid Mary adieu. 

In the night, there was no running. It was one foot in front of the other, staying conscious until daylight rose again.  

At mile 90 or so, the end was in sight. I was out of the mountains and back on a country road, when I misread an arrow, made a sharp turn and started shuffling towards the Berkeley Pit. 

It was a remarkable turn, considering the course was extremely well marked and I had a map highlighting a 10-mile straight shot in the opposite direction.  

And yet, there I was, like a very slow moth to a lamp, straight toward the Pit, wherein layers of red acidic rock were exposed like scarred flesh.  

“Ought to look at the map,” I thought. Then, inevitably, “Whoops.” 

I turned back, thinking, “Eh, what’s a few more steps, anyway?”  

I neared the finish. In downtown Butte, a day and a half after we started, people were packing up the farmer’s market.  

“What 5k is this?” I imagined them asking.  

The tower reappeared, and with it, gratitude.  

Gratitude for the volunteers who taped my feet and gave me hugs. Gratitude for the race director who devised a route and acquired the permits. Gratitude for the community backing a foot race on the land they love.  

But only when I was done was there gratitude for the rocks, and the ground underneath me. 

A gratitude for what builds you up and then breaks you down.  

It was – it is – indeed a very rich hill.

Kelsey Evans is the editor of the Whitefish Pilot.