Forty-seven people milled around in the predawn drizzle outside Mary MacDonald Elementary School in Silver Bay on Minnesota's North Shore. It was Sept. 14, 1991. At 5 a.m. sharp, the inaugural Superior Trail 100 Mile race was underway, runners following the new Superior Hiking Trail through the rugged Sawtooth Mountains to Cook County High School in Grand Marais. They faced 10 hours of heavy rain, fog, mud, hand-over-hand ascents, one night, and 100 difficult miles.
"We were a little worried; we didn't know how many would make it back," said then-race director Harry Sloan. Twenty-seven people finished, including first-place for Bob Stavig, then 42, of Bloomington, who finished in 23 hours, 8 minutes and 57 seconds. Stavig did not have a support crew — a staple of the current race. He ran most of the race alone.
"It rained so much, those little footbridges were really slick. I fell a lot," said Stavig, who now is 67. "Then in the middle of the night — around 80 miles — my flashlight batteries died. It was pitch black and sort of spooky because I could hear a waterfall, and sometimes I could feel the spray, but I couldn't see how close I was. I came on one of those glow sticks that marked the course. It was useless if you held it up, but if you held it close to the ground you could see where you were going. I only had to go about a mile crouched down like that before I got to a checkpoint."
At the time, ultrarunning (anything over the standard 26.2-mile marathon distance) was a fringe activity undertaken by a close-knit group of experienced outdoorspeople. In 1991, Superior was one of only 10 trail runs of 100 miles in the country.
Ultrarunning, and specifically 100-milers, have soared in popularity since then — the website Run100s.com lists 145 races in the United States — but Superior has retained its status as one of the toughest, wildest courses out there. This year's race begins Sept. 9. Cutoff times being an indication of difficulty, 30 hours is about average for a trail 100-miler — Superior's is 38 hours.
The event's website, describing the 100-mile, 50-mile and marathon distances now offered, does not sugarcoat: " ... rugged, rooty, rocky, 95 percent single-track trail with near constant climbs and descents …. The Superior Fall Trail Races are very difficult/challenging races and are probably not a good choice for your first trail or ultra race."
Bringing it home
It's no surprise that the race's founder, Sloan, was an accomplished ultrarunner and part of a strong northern Minnesota ultrarunning community. The Voyageur 50-mile and Edmund Fitzgerald 100K (62 mile) road ultra race were familiar stamping grounds for Sloan and his running friends when they decided the newly created Superior Hiking Trail would be a great venue for a race. Inspired by his experiences at the Western States Endurance in California, which claims to be the oldest 100-miler, Sloan decided to recreate some of his favorite aspects of that race back home. Some nods to Western States were finishing on a high school track, a silver belt buckle to those who finished under 24 hours, and an assisted water crossing along the way — about 75 miles into the Superior 100, a volunteer ferries runners across a beaver pond in a canoe. The lefse served at aid stations, though, was pure Minnesota.
While the trail existed, the logistics of organizing a point-to-point 100-mile race through remote territory proved daunting. Sloan took a week of vacation from his job with the St. Louis County sheriff's department to mark the course with 1,200 glow sticks he'd bought at a dollar apiece. He and others on foot marked 89 miles of the course, and then had to re-mark large sections when hikers removed the glow sticks. Tami Tanski-Sherman, who later became co-director with Sloan, recruited volunteers for the 18 aid stations.