Meet the Group That Speed Scrambles Up the Flatirons Before Work – runnersworld.com

On certain weekday mornings, around 5:30 or 6:00 a.m., a small group of athletes gathers at a trailhead in Boulder, Colorado. From there, they’ll run about a mile or two along the dirt trails that snake up to the base of mountains, gaining elevation as they hop over rocks, roots, and whatever obstacles lie in the path.

But when they near the Flatirons, the iconic slabs of rock that overlook town, that’s when the real adventure begins. Instead of reversing course as many runners do, the athletes forge ahead to the base of the rocks, sometimes cutting off trail and hiking up ultra-steep sections to do so. And when they reach the base, without breaking stride, they’ll lean forward, place their hands on the rock, and continue their skyward journey, scrambling up the massive sheets of rock, typically without the safety or comfort of climbing equipment—just the grip of their own fingers and feet.

Once they reach the top of a slab, they’ll either climb down—again, without equipment—or on steeper sections, fix a rope and rappel to the base, sometimes dropping a hundred feet in just a minute or two. Oftentimes, they’ll repeat said scrambling routine on another slab of rock before booking it back down to the trailhead by 8:00 a.m.

Matt Trappe

These aren’t professional ninjas, stunt people-in-training, or otherwise fit folks with death wishes. They’re Satan’s Minions Scrambling Club.

“In some respects, it’s crazy what we do,” admits Bill Wright, 57, founder of the Minions, father of two, and software engineer at Oracle. And that inherent craziness is why, in a town teeming with Olympians, Ironman finishers, elite runners, and other extraordinary athletes, the Minions still manage to stand out.

The Minions began nearly 20 years ago after Wright broke his back on a local climbing route known as Death and Transfiguration. During recovery, he read a Boulder climbing guidebook—Flatiron Classics: A Guide to Easy Climbs and Trails in Boulder’s Flatirons by Gerry Roach—and became fixated on tackling what Roach had designated the top-10 climbs in the Flatirons in less than 15 hours (a time he’d heard another local climber had achieved). After he healed, he began preparing for the feat. Because his sons were young at the time, he’d train while the rest of the family was still asleep—around 5:30 or 6:00 a.m.—to maximize his time with them.

“It wasn’t even so much the athletic challenge of it,” Wright explains, “it was the adventure to go to spectacular places that are gorgeous.” At the same time, “you’ve got to enjoy suffering and breathing hard a little bit,” he adds.

Wright recruited friends to join, and together, they met in the early dawn to speed climb various Flatirons routes, typically without equipment. This involved running from their cars parked at the trailhead up to the base of the rocks.

Matt Trappe

“We don’t teach it, we don’t guide it, and we don’t even recommend it,” Wrights says of scrambling the group tackles, which ranges in difficulty of pitch up to about 5.6 (considered easy to intermediate-level rock climbing where using ropes is recommended). Sometimes, there will be a fixed line for rappelling down, but in general, most of the Minion climbs are done sans equipment. That said, Wright’s philosophy is to always do a new route with equipment first before attempting it as a scramble.

As for the group’s name? That came from a friend-of-a-friend who Wright has never met. He tells the story like this: Wright invited a co-worker to join an upcoming run/climb, involving something like 5 miles of running, 3,000 feet of vertical gain, and 10 pitches of climbing up to 5.5 grade in difficulty, all before 7:45 a.m. That friend emailed this to another friend who responded: “Jesus Christ! This Bill Wright fellow sounds like one of Satan’s minions. My advice to you is to avoid him at all costs.”

Wright embraced the moniker wholeheartedly. “It sounded like such a great name,” he explains. “So, we became Satan’s Minions Scrambling Club.”

The group started with just four members and stayed in the single digits for four to five years. Over time, it grew through word of mouth and today, supports a triple-digit contingency. “It’s dangerous,” Wright says. “You could die doing this, but if you’re already doing all that stuff, then we’d love to have you.”

But not just anyone can become a Minion.

That’s why there’s a specific process for admitting new members to the group. Wright first vets interested applicants via email, asking them about their prior climbing experience and confirming they can solo either the First or Third Flatiron (two common climbing routes in Boulder) in less than an hour. If they pass, they move onto an in-person “interview scramble,” in which Wright takes them out scrambling and assesses their skills and confidence on the rock. For this part, wannabe Minions must wear either running shoes resoled with sticky rubber or a specific climbing approach shoe, both of which are safer for scrambling than regular running shoes, Wright says.

His criteria: “If you make me nervous, you’re not in,” he explains, “because we’re not daredevils.” Perhaps because of this strict policy, in the nearly two decades since the club formed, there’s only been one fall, which resulted in a broken ankle.

Matt Trappe

Once athletes pass the interview process, they’re in for a wild ride.

The Minions don’t operate on any set schedule. Rather, any member of the group can email the list and organize a run-scramble. Wright estimates that happens about once a week, on average, with more meetups held in the warmer months and less during the winter. The weekday group scrambles are typically small (less than 10 people), and range in both time (1 to 2 hours) and intensity.

“People think the Minions always go hard,” Wright says. “Frequently not. We do it when we race. I like to go hard once or twice a week. Other than that, I mean we move fast for normal people because we don’t generally stop because they’re rock climbs normally, but we keep a nice conversational pace. It’s a real social thing.”

Matt Trappe

Modern-day Minions span a range of ages—Wright’s son Derek, 21, is the youngest; Wright, at 57, is the oldest—and athletic resumes. Anton Krupicka, two-time Leadville 100 Champion and two-time 50 mile Trail National Champion, is a member, as are several other sponsored athletes in ultrarunning, climbing, and skimo racing, says Wright. But others are simply regular working professionals who also happen to love exploring the Flatirons.

And though the club has grown considerably in recent years, what the Minions do is still by no means mainstream. “The hybrid running and scrambling mixture is definitely a niche activity and sport,” says Eric Lee, 37, a scientist, ultramarathoner, and Minion member since about 2013. “There is definitely only a subset of people who are interested in doing that, pushing the craft, and learning more.”

The pinnacle event of the group’s last 15 years is the annual Tour de Flatirons, a five-stage trail-running/speed-scrambling event that takes place on Wednesday night over the course of five weeks. This year’s Tour begins on September 11, and will continue through early October.

The 2018 Tour drew about 30 to 40 participants, says Wright, who takes great joy in designing the course each year. And in the true spirit of Satan, it’s pretty brutal. Some of the more challenging tour stages from recent years have included two to four miles of running, total vertical gain of 1,500 to 2,000 feet, and 10 to 14 pitches of climbing, ranging between 5.2 and 5.6 in difficulty.

Matt Trappe

“The limiting factor on the rock is not so much the technical difficulty, but your fitness,” says Krupicka, 36, who’s participated in stages of the Tour every year since 2012. He explains that the fastest Minions don’t typically pause as they scramble, and thus, don’t rest. “It’s really intense that way, but just in like a competitive kind of anaerobic threshold kind of way.”

The overall experience can be humbling, especially for newcomers. “When you first join, you think ‘Oh I’m the best at this,’” says Cordis Hall, 25, a sponsored runner with Adidas Terrex and Minion since 2015, recalling his first Tour. “And you really get embarrassed your first time there.” Hall won the Tour in 2017.

For Sonia Buckley, 31, a physicist and Minion since 2016, the Tour was her introduction to the scrambling. Her friend invited her to come out, and it turns out “going scrambling” meant completing a stage of the Tour. “I just hadn’t realized this [speed soloing the Flatirons] was a thing, and I liked it,” Buckley says. Through the Minions, Buckley, a “climber that runs,” started running—an activity she previously considered “boring”—and learned that she actually enjoyed the sport. “I like the people, and I like racing, and I like climbing, so this is a really fun combination of all those things,” she says.

Angela Tomczik, 27, a statistical analyst and one of the few female Minions along with Buckley, joined the group about four years ago after hearing about it through a friend. Training with the Minions, she says, has made her a stronger runner, “especially downhill because the end of every race you’re just running down the trail as fast as you can and none of it is smooth running,” she explains. “You’re kind of rock hopping and avoiding obstacles and everything is an adventure.”

Matt Trappe

The combination of running and scrambling is “pretty much my favorite thing to do,” says Krupicka, who, outside of select Tour stages, often partakes in the hybrid exercise alone. “It’s probably the activity that’s easiest for me to find that sort of elusive flow state because it requires so much concentration and focus that it’s almost mandatory to be in that kind of state, especially when you’re trying to do it quickly and efficiently.”

Also: “The Flatirons are so special because it just seems so improbable,” he adds. “You’re just in these sort of heroic positions on these giant rock formations…It’s sort of the improbability that you could develop your skill level to the point where you feel really comfortable in this high-consequence terrain that affords you this heroic position on the landscape.”

Matt Trappe

As the Minion’s founding father, Wright hopes the annual event will persist—and perhaps evolve into a longer-distance venture—in coming years. “I want it to live on past my involvement,” he says, referencing both the Minions and the Rattlesnake Ramble (a local trail race that he organizes annually). “So my job is to make sure it’s got enough energy behind it that it can continue without me.”

Contributing Writer Jenny is a Boulder, Colorado-based health and fitness journalist.