WHY START TRAIL RUNNING
In A Moveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway famously wrote of his alpine adventures in Austria that, “Anything you ran down from, you had to climb up. That gave you legs that were fit to run down with.”
While “Papa” was talking about ski touring, for Martin Maisonpierre the same could be said of the winter and the summer. “For me,” Maisonpierre said, “backcountry skiing and trail running both have that same mix of working to reach the summit and then on the downhill always looking three or four moves ahead. Both sports give you that opportunity to get into a really good flow.”
The communications director for MSR, Maisonpierre grew up on the East Coast skiing in Vermont (briefly taking a turn at snowboarding, which he regretted, because he could go much faster on two planks) before moving to Seattle. The daily sight of the glorious Cascades immediately opened his eyes to the possibilities of the backcountry.