09/03/2026
This Beaverhead update will be published in the local Salmon newspaper (Recorder Herlad) on Thursday, September 3, 2026. We wanted to share it here and add the following message to all you runners and supporters: "THANK YOU! You all made this race possible. We hope our paths cross someday at a race or two."
Beaverhead Endurance Runs
Thank You for 13 Incredible Years!
Thirteen years ago, the Beaverhead Endurance Runs began with an idea, a love for the mountains we call home, and a desire to share a little piece of this incredible country with others. We could never have imagined what “The Beaverhead” would become or how much it would come to mean to us, our families, and so many people in the Salmon community.
After many long conversations, much contemplation, and with very heavy hearts, we have made the difficult decision to bring the Beaverhead Endurance Runs to an end. This was not an easy decision. For 13 years, the second Saturday in July has meant Beaverhead to our family. It has been circled on our calendars, talked about around our dinner tables, and anticipated throughout the year. Race weekend brought our families together. We worked together, laughed together, worried together, solved problems together, and at the end of a very long race day, celebrated together. Some of our greatest family memories were made because of this race. But the Beaverhead was never just our race. It belonged to this community.
Over the years, thousands of runners have traveled to Salmon from across the country and around the world to experience the Beaverhead Mountains, the Continental Divide, and the rugged beauty of the place we are fortunate enough to call home. They came here to test themselves over 55 kilometers or 100 kilometers of some of the most beautiful and challenging country anywhere. What those runners discovered, however, was more than a difficult mountain race. They discovered Salmon, Idaho. They met the people who stood at aid stations for hours. They met volunteers who traveled into the mountains early in the morning and stayed until late at night. They were encouraged by people they had never met before. They were fed, cared for, cheered on, directed, timed, transported, and welcomed by a community that treated them like friends. That is what made the Beaverhead special.
To our volunteers, there are simply not enough words to thank you. Many of you returned year after year. You gave up your time, your vehicles, your weekends, and countless hours to help us put on this race. You stood in the heat, the cold, the wind, and sometimes the rain. You helped runners when they were exhausted, discouraged, hungry, hurting, or simply needed someone to tell them they could keep going. Most importantly, you weren't just volunteers. You were our friends.
To our local businesses and sponsors, thank you for believing in this event and supporting it year after year. Your generosity helped us welcome runners to Salmon and allowed a small-town race in the mountains of Idaho to become an event known and loved by runners from many different places.
To our local runners, thank you for making the Beaverhead your race. It has been especially meaningful to watch people from our own community stand on the starting line, take on these mountains, and accomplish something extraordinary. Along the way, the Beaverhead helped build a culture of trail and ultra running in our community that we hope continues long after the final race.
And to our families, thank you. The Beaverhead required far more than race weekend. It required months of preparation, planning, phone calls, trail work, meetings, organizing, worrying, and problem-solving. Our families sacrificed alongside us and made this race possible. The Beaverhead became part of our family story.
We know some people will wonder why the race cannot simply be passed on to someone else. We have thought about that too. But after 13 years, we have come to realize that, for us, the Beaverhead is more than an event or a race that we direct. It is a chapter of our lives. It is part of our family's story, filled with people, experiences, friendships, struggles, accomplishments, and memories that we will carry with us forever. We have decided to close that chapter the way it was written—with our family, our friends, and this community. Life changes. Families change. Priorities change. As our own family dynamics have changed, we have realized that it is time for us to make some changes as well. The time and energy we have devoted to the Beaverhead for so many years now need to be directed more toward our families and the next chapters of our lives. Knowing that does not make this decision any less painful.
We will miss that second Saturday in July. We will miss seeing familiar faces at the starting line. We will miss the nervous excitement before the race begins, the stories coming in from the runners and the aid stations’ volunteers, and watching exhausted runners cross the finish line. We will miss working alongside friends who always stood by our sides to make the race happen. Mostly, we will miss the people.
When we look back on the Beaverhead Endurance Runs, we will certainly remember the mountains, the trails, the finish lines, and the incredible athletes who came here. But what we will remember most are the friendships and the people who made those 13 years possible.
To the community of Salmon, our hometown and the community that helped raise us, “Thank you! Thank you for welcoming runners from around the world. Thank you for volunteering. Thank you for supporting our race. Thank you for running it. Thank you for believing in what we were trying to create. And thank you for giving our family 13 years of memories that we will treasure for the rest of our lives.
The Beaverhead may no longer have a starting line on the second Saturday in July, but the friendships, stories, and memories created along the way will remain. We are proud of what we built together. We are grateful for every person who became part of it. And we will always be grateful that, for 13 wonderful years, Salmon, Idaho, was home to The Beaverhead.
With our deepest gratitude,
The Tarkalson Family
