Endless Mountains Adventure Race 2026
A Taste of History at the 2026 Endless Mountains Adventure Race
Abby Perkiss - Rootstock Racing / 22.06.2026
On May 10, 1775, Vermont’s Green Mountain Boys, joined by militias from Massachusetts and Connecticut, crossed Lake Champlain under darkness and descended on Fort Ticonderoga in a surprise dawn raid. The force, small but mighty, overtook the sleeping British garrison in what would become known as the first offensive victory for American forces in the Revolutionary War.
Mount Defiance, the hill overlooking the fort, marks a fitting location for the start of the fourth edition of the Endless Mountains Adventure Race, the only US-based qualifier for the 2026 Adventure Racing World Championship, which kicked off today with historic flair. On the eve of the nation’s commemoration of the semi-quincentennial of the Declaration of Independence, racers were greeted with Revolutionary War reenactors, and at the sound of canon fire teams stormed down the mountain to begin the 350-mile journey that touches New York, Massachusetts, and Vermont. “I felt there was a target on my back,” quipped marshal Jim Rounsley, the lone Brit on site, “guys, can we talk about this?”
Teams paused briefly in the town of Ticonderoga to retrieve their maps, and then the race, presented by Rootstock Racing and supported by MRS Packrafting, began in earnest as teams.
As of this publication, the first teams have just launched their canoes along the La Chute River for a scenic paddle down the southern tail of Lake Champlain, the dividing line between the Adirondack Mountains to the west and the Greens to the east. Along the way, they will encounter two embedded foot loops: a micro-orienteering section on the grounds of Fort Ticonderoga and a proper trek in the protected wilderness area of New York’s Saddles State Forest, offering sweeping views of the lake’s South Bay, crashing waterfalls, and, if racers are lucky, sights of peregrine falcons and bald eagles soaring overhead. Teams will take out near the southern end of the lake in the early morning hours of Day 2 and prepare to enter the Green Mountain State by bike.
Stage B, the longest bike stage of the race, offers a rugged journey south and east through Vermont’s vast network of Class 4 unimproved roadways. They will ride along the Poultney River’s scenic banks and marshes and navigate the renowned Slate Valley single-track trails, a fifty-mile network of multi-use trails that has been built over the last decade. Some locals have referred to Slate Valley as the Bentonville of Vermont, and while most have crowned the Kingdom Trails as Vermont’s finest, RDs Abby Perkiss and Brent Freedland expect many Endless racers to question whether Slate Valley deserves the throne. In addition, teams will start to enjoy Vermont’s unparalleled hospitality when they roll through the town of Fair Haven. There, the owner of Old School Bagels will be ready to greet racers with sandwiches, coffee, and sweet treats – the perfect refuel for those final miles. Dotwatchers can expect to see every team stop here; there is a mandatory five-minute media pause.
Each edition of the Endless Mountains Adventure Race features one keystone trekking stage, and for 2026 that section comes on Stage C, in the Robert Stafford White Rocks National Recreation Area. Named in memory of Vermont’s late governor and senator, the area boasts more than 22,000 acres of protected land, which teams will traverse during this expansive rogaine. This section offers everything racers have come to expect from a Rootstock race: challenging navigation, significant opportunity for strategy and route choice, extended off-trail travel, and the hard-earned reward of cascading waterways, scenic viewpoints, and little-known treasures deep in the forest. In their pre-race time estimates, Perkiss and Freedland projected that this stage would take top teams as many as nineteen hours to complete – roughly 20 percent of their total race time. This means that the rest of the field, who they expect will be on the course for the full 120 hours it is open, may spend 24 hours or more on this leg.
When they come out of the woods, the adrenaline hits of Stage D should keep the sleepmonsters at bay. The leg brings together mountain biking, trekking, swimming, and cliff diving into a multisport extravaganza. Racers will depart White Rocks by bike for a southerly journey along Otter Creek, the longest river entirely contained within the borders of Vermont. The river, once called Wnegigwtegw, or Otter Flow, served as a critical thruway for the Abenaki, Algonquin, and Iroquois nations. Today, wild otters still swim in the creek’s waters, playing among the beaver, mink, raccoon and muskrats that also call the creek bed home.
In East Dorset, teams will climb up from the river valley to take on two embedded challenges. Their first stop is the Freedley Quarry, an abandoned underground marble cavern carved into the base of Mount Aeolous. There, racers will use a bouldering map to navigate in, around, and through the quarry’s dark depths.
After a thrilling descent through Dorset Hollow, they will make their way to the more famous Dorset Marble Quarry, a site beloved by locals that has become a destination for outdoor enthusiasts from around the country, since USA Today named it among the nation’s best swimming holes. The oldest commercial quarry in the country, Dorset stood as a thriving economic engine through the nineteenth century. Today, the grand slab marble walls have been reclaimed for recreation and the expansive site – roughly 110 by 27 meters – offers opportunity for sunbathing, swimming, and cliff jumping. Racers will pause here for a series of jumps, the highest reaching 25 feet above the water. With water temps hovering around 50 degrees Fahrenheit, they will no doubt be hoping for a hot day. Teams finding themselves here at night will carry mandatory dive lights through the stage… or elect to sleep until daylight, roughly 4:30am during race week.
Following their refreshing dip, teams will complete a small foot loop and another single track loop on bike, further exploring the area’s expansive quarried history, before returning to the roads and what will undoubtedly feel like an endless climb back into the mountains to the Somerset Reservoir, a remote wilderness lake at the headwaters of the Deerfield River, which may just be the spiritual heart of this year’s course.
Minds and souls will, no doubt, be deep in the throes of the internal turmoil unique to expedition racing, and what better place for it than a majestic, serene tapestry like Somerset? If it’s a quiet day, it will be the racers and the loons. And nothing else.
Somerset’s long fingers and undeveloped shoreline make it the perfect spot for an adventure by packraft. For Stage E, presented by MRS Packrafting, teams will transition above the northern tip of the reservoir and choose a route to the water’s edge. There they will have some additional decisions to make, as this stage offers substantial route choice and strategy, and efficient teams will be rewarded as they move between the water and the land, retrieving checkpoints on a southerly course toward Mount Snow.
It is at Somerset that teams will encounter the fresh faces – and fresh feet – of the Endless Mountains Lite racers, who will be joining them for the final legs of the journey. Astute teams will also realize that they’ve entered the home stretch. The Lite race is 24 hours in duration, which means teams likely only have one more sleep before the finish line.
The penultimate bike stage, also presented by MRS Packrafting, offers a choose-your-own-adventure through the high peaks and storied small town of Wilmington, Vermont. On the flanks of Mount Snow, teams reach their first decision point: summit the mountain and traverse the rugged ridge toward Haystack Mountain, or head east for a far easier, ambling ride through the gentle crosstown trails in the valley below. If they choose the lower journey, teams must pass through three designated waypoints or risk losing one of their hard-earned mandatory CPs. The routes come back together at the solar-powered Vermont Distillers, at the base of Hogback Mountain. There, teams will drop their bikes for an embedded trek through the conservation land and will be rewarded with some of the finest views on the course from the old fire tower perched atop Mt. Olga.
When they finish the trek, teams will reach their next decision point: do they ride west, skirting the Harriman Reservoir, or do they drop south and make their way to their packrafts, for an Endless Mountains first: a strategy-filled bike-raft through Harriman? The reservoir was constructed in 1923 by a local power company, who built a hydroelectric dam and flooded the former lumber village of Mountain Mills. It now extends ten miles, from Wilmington to Whitingham, but racers will be contained to the middle third, as they navigate their way through several optional checkpoints – a high-value prize this late in the race, reserved for the most adventurous of teams.
As the finish line nears, racers will drop their bikes in Readsboro for a point-to-point trek through the southern expanse of the Green Mountain National Forest. The route takes them along a relative plateau, and racers can expect wet and marshy conditions as they traverse a series of beaver dams and trout ponds. If they’re lucky, they will encounter the moose, bear, and otters that make the area their home; Freedland spotted two of three when he was setting the most remote checkpoints on the leg. In keeping with the spirit of Vermont Senator George Aiken, who led the charge for the Eastern Wilderness Act of 1975 and for whom the nearby wilderness area is named, racers can expect ample opportunity for late-race bushwhacking. Those compass bearings should help keep them sharp en route to the stage’s final challenge: an orienteering relay at the Prospect Mountain Nordic Ski Center, where each leg is worth a single mandatory checkpoint.
After completing the o-relay, teams will return to their bikes for the final stage of the race: a straight shot south, across the Vermont border, to North Adams, Massachusetts and the long-anticipated finish line. But teams should take care not to rest on their laurels here; this is not a victory lap. The terrain is burly, and the road quality is inconsistent. This twenty-mile stretch could take teams the better part of four hours to cover, maybe more, and on tired legs, it may feel insurmountable.
Once racers break free from the forest’s depths, they will be greeted by a screaming gravel descent that gives way to smooth pavement as they make their way into the northern edge of the Berkshires, in the shadow of Mount Greylock, the Bay State’s highest peak. And after five days in the woods, they’ll be sharing space with throngs of concert goers, in town for the three-day Solid Sound Festival. For teams finishing early, they may hear the acoustic riffs of Billy Bragg and Wilco on Friday night – contemporary Americana with a British punk twang, befitting the end of the journey on the eve of the nation’s 250th birthday.
For more information on the event and expansive in-race coverage, visit the Endless Mountains website, as well as Rootstock Racing’s Facebook and Instagram pages. Live tracking is available here.
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