“Aren’t You Afraid?” The Remarkable Mountain Runs of Canada’s Jenny Tough
“Aren’t you afraid?”
Jenny Tough’s love of mountain adventures started while growing up in Calgary, but she was never a typical mountain runner. It’s not even clear that she thought of herself as an athlete when she decided to run six of the world’s most challenging mountain ranges, solo and unsupported.
Growing up in Calgary, Jenny Tough didn’t participate in sports. As with many trail runners, her attraction to the mountains was stoked by childhood adventures with her family and evolved into a passion that took her across the world’s most daunting mountain ranges.
“¿No tienes miedo?” – aren’t you afraid? asked a group of Quechua women who met Canadian runner Jenny Tough high in the Bolivian Andes, far above the zone of paved roads, restaurants, hotels and medical help. She was running the length of the 700-km mountain range solo, so it was a fair question. She shrugged, smiled and said, “Sí, un poco.” – yes, a little.
That was in October 2018. Tough didn’t have the time or the Spanish to tell them about the near-death experiences she’d had two years before, running across the Tian Shan mountains in Kyrgyzstan (a 23-day, 980-km run through some of the highest mountains in Asia), or the rugged, dry and dangerous Atlas mountains in 2016.
It was all part of an ambitious plan to run across six of the world’s greatest mountain ranges, solo and unassisted. It would take planning, outdoor skills, athletic endurance, creativit y, the abilit y to suffer and just a little bit of obsessiveness.
But Tough’s first runs, when she was a teenager in her last year at Churchill High School i n northwest Calgary, could not have foretold these wild adventures. “I had low self-esteem,” she says. “I didn’t look like girls on the covers of magazines. I was chubby.”
Growing up i n the early 2000s, she loved her outdoor adventures in the Rockies with her family, but not high-school sports. “My dad was a runner, and he told me to take our golden retriever out for some runs,” says Tough. “No teenage girl wants to take her dad’s advice, but I went for runs, and at first the experience was really negative. I’d go out with the dog, in my skater shoes, but I saw it as a kind of punishment for eating.”
Slowly, against her expectations, she began to find running a source of pleasure and self-esteem. Running culture offered an unexpected escape from the strictures and norms of high school. All you had to do to be a runner was to run. “You don’t have to be skinny or pretty,” says Tough. And you could do it by yourself, which she loved.
Tough took a gap year after high school and travelled in South America. Away on her own, she discovered that by running, she could safely and efficiently explore unfamiliar cities. She still loved being out in the mountains and visited Patagonia to hike. She was surprised, however, that even out on the trails with a pack, she found herself breaking into a run.
After her gap year, she went to university in Queensland, Australia, where she studied tourism. In the summers, she took a job at the Running Room in Vancouver, where her parents had moved. She did a 5k race, then a 10k and a half-marathon, and was hooked on longer distances. Her first marathon was with her dad in Australia. Later, she did the Vancouver and Victoria Marathons, but road racing was never where she felt she could excel. She ran on the trails and did trail races, but she still didn’t even own a pair of trailrunning shoes, and thought she wasn’t really the racing type.
Then, one day, a way to combine her three loves (travel, the mountains and running) came to her when she thought up the idea of running across six of the world’s toughest mountain ranges. “A bottle of wine may have been involved,” muses Tough. “Run the World’s Mountains” was her project to run solo and unsupported across a range on every continent.
There were rules to the project: “I would go self-supported,” says Tough. “With Jeeps driving behind you carrying your stuff, you might as well run it on your treadmill.” Her packing would be severely restricted by the need to move quickly. “If my pack weighs more than about 10 kg,” she says, “I can’t run.” Since the trips would take more than three weeks to complete, she would only carry enough food for up to five days – the time she estimated she needed to travel between villages, where she would re-supply with whatever was available.
For her f irst run, she chose to cross the Tian Shan mountains in Kyrgyzstan. It was a bold choice: the Kyrgyz portion of the range was almost 1,000 km long, no one had ever crossed it before (even in an expedition,
let alone by themselves, in trail running shoes) and the highest peaks in the range, adjacent to the Himalayas, are more than 7,000 metres above sea level. Some passes are 5,000 metres – and, as Tough says, “I was officially insured only to 4,500 metres.” Glaciers, rubble moraines, freezing temperatures, fast-running streams and high altitude make it a forbidding place for a runner. “There were no travel guides,” says Tough, “not even Lonely Planet.”
She impressed herself with her endurance and got cocky. At halfway (in Tough’s estimation the most difficult point in any endurance challenge), she took a wrong path up a valley and slowly, slab by steepening slab, found herself in the middle of a huge rock wall, unable to pick her way back down and with no choice but to keep climbing. There was no one for miles, and no one to rely on but herself. It was so steep that at one point, she dangled by her arms and had to pull herself up onto the face. “I really thought I was going to die,” says Tough, who had no technical rock climbing experience. When she finally made it to the top, she “had the biggest cry any adult has ever had. On the wall, I had told myself I would quit if I survived, but after my cry, I surprised myself by just fixing my ponytail and beginning to run again.”
One day, she thought up the idea of running across six of the world’s toughest mountain ranges. “A bottle of wine may have been involved,” muses Tough.
Tough is deeply interested in the peoples and cultures of the mountains where she runs. In a fortuitous break from camping out in bad weather, nomads invited her to their yurt that night. “The more difficult the conditions people live in,” she says, “the more hospitable they often are.” The next morning, she realized that her attitude toward the challenge had changed. She slowed down. “People seem to want to do something really gnarly just to get a lot of likes on Facebook,” she said. “But not me. I think, just go outside and have fun!” (She’s also said, however, that “if I don’t cry or bleed at some point – preferably not at the same time – it’s not an adventure.”)
The 850-km Atlas range in Morocco was next. In many ways, it seemed like an easier challenge. At least Tough spoke some French, the predominant language there. Also, there were guidebooks and maps and the highest mountains were 4,000 metres, much lower than the Tian Shan. She spent five days learning about the heat and lack of water as she made her way through the foothills. Navigation was easier, since the mountains are a relatively narrow cordillera, and she could often see the Sahara to the south. But despite being so close to Europe, the cultural challenges were even greater than in the Tian Shan.
On her fifth night, beneath a desert sky full of stars, Tough was camped nowhere near a trail and two Jeeps roared up to her campsite. “Ten guys with guns but no uniforms jumped out and started yelling at me, telling me they were the police and to get in one of the Jeeps so they could take me to the nearest village,” she said. “They said that I wasn’t safe. I was shocked. The village was one of the most difficult places I had been as a woman in my life. I had been catcalled relentlessly, not allowed into restaurants, told that if I wanted a room in the hotel, I had to enter through the kitchen. It was horrifying. It turned out that the police thought that there would be an incident if I was harmed. I didn’t go with them, but they kept watching me throughout the expedition.”
Tough was well aware of the risks she was taking, but she points out that being barred from adventure is just one point on the spectrum of women’s oppression. “There is a faction of Western society that sees women as vulnerable, helpless, second-class citizens requiring protection and censorship,” she says. “‘Remember, little girl, the world is not for you to explore. That’s only for tough, strong men. You just worry about keeping your eggs healthy and earning less than your husband,’ or whatever it is they think I’m meant to be doing with my time. To be fully fair, I’m not saying the world is riskfree for women. I’m completely aware that I am physically vulnerable to the (generally) larger and stronger other half of the population – and I can’t forget that.”
In the Atlas, Tough suffered from dehydration, and once went 50 kilometres without water. She decided it would be cooler, and perhaps safer, to run at night. But the poor visibility led to one of her most serious mishaps. She ran off the edge of a threemetre cliff and fell onto some rocks below, opening a serious gash in her hip. “There was a lot of blood and pain,” she recalled. “At first I was worried that I might die there. I thought I needed stitches, but I covered it with duct tape as best I could. I remembered one of the women in the village telling me that many mothers who had problems in labour often died from infection before they could reach the nearest hospital, three days away, so my only option, really, was to continue.”
Eventually, the wound turned green and was severely infected, but she finished the run and became the first person to run across the Atlas mountains. For months, she could not sleep on that side of her body and she still has a shark-bite-shaped scar. But the pain and fear were slowly replaced by the desire to continue the mountain runs project. For her, the rewards of pushing herself while running in the mountains outweighed the risks.
The next season, she decided to take on the 600-km Bolivian Andes. Now she had sponsors who gave her gear and paid for her experiences, but her commitment to going
“Mountains,” she says, “always give you the lesson you need when you need it. I needed to be smacked over the head. Trying to push myself, running to exhaustion – such a mistake.”
alone and unsupported remained as strong as ever. In Bolivia, she got to know the Quechua and Aymara peoples, who worked in the high Andes. Often, they were employed in the illegal coca trade, and in addition to relentless cold rain and high-altitude running, Tough had to remain aware of her circumstances. Villagers, especially in the valleys, would sometimes warn her about dangerous people, inevitably “at the next village.” “Don’t go that way, they’ll kill you,” they said, and even asked her if she was carrying a gun. But she completed the trip. Tough admits to having been afraid, but the fear itself was worse than anything that happened to her. It was an important lesson. The price of taking on the challenge of spectacular alpine terrain, with passes up to 5,000 m between soaring, glaciated peaks, was mastering that fear.
For her fourth mountain range, Tough chose the Southern Alps, which run 500 km down the axis of New Zealand’s South Island.
She had reservations about her choice, since New Zealand did not present as big a cultural challenge as her other runs. She decided to make up for it by pushing hard, with 60- to 70-km days. It was a mistake, because she soon learned that the trails in New Zealand were more rugged than anything she had encountered in Europe or North America. In the developing world, Tough says, “Trails have to go places. In the privileged world, trails are made for leisure, and so they’re often really gnarly.” She got through it, but learned the risks of pushing herself to exhaustion. “Mountains,” she says, “always give you the lesson you need when you need it. I needed to be smacked over the head. I was about halfway through. Trying to push myself, running to exhaustion – such a mistake.” She completed the run, with yet another lesson learned.
For her fifth mountain run, which was due to start in the spring of 2020, Tough was planning to run across the Caucasus mountains, beginning in Georgia. covid- 19 travel restrictions forced her to cancel those plans and turn her attention back home, to the Alberta Rockies, where her adventures began. She is considering crossing the Rockies from Waterton Lakes to the B.C. border as her next challenge.
Tough has plenty to do besides her trips. She now lives in Innerleithen, Scotland (her father is Scottish and she grew up with an affinity for Scotland), where she has great access to trail running and mountain-biking. Her career as a speaker and writer and her work designing fastpacking gear for her sponsors keep her busy. She is also the race director of the Type II Fun Run in Braemar, Scotland. “Type I fun is the kind of activity that’s fun all the time,” says Tough, “like maybe skiing or something, when you’ve got a grin permanently on your face. Type II fun is different – it’s the kind of fun that can be very miserable at the time, but literally the moment you stop it, you love it and want to do it again.”
The race seems like a real opportunity to explore just that. “There will be no set course, no feed stations, no support, no massage tent, no mercy,” says the signup page on the website. “The race will be won by strategy, not chief ly by speed. Only skilled navigators and those with the ability to embrace discomfort will make it. Thirty hours, a mix of mandatory and optional checkpoints. Sound horrible? Do you like to sign up for horrible things? Then read on.”
Tough is excited that one of this year’s entrants is Yorkshire farmer and British ultrarunning champion Nicky Spinks. Spinks is the first person ever to complete doubles of all three classic British fell-running rounds, which link numerous peaks in a circuit (the Paddy Buckley Round, the Ramsay Round and the Bob Graham Round) and attempted the Barkley Marathons in 2019. But Tough, who started running so modestly and gradually, has a mission that extends beyond the community of people who like to sign up for “horrible things.” She wants her adventures to inspire others to stretch themselves and to use their minds and bodies to their fullest potential. Her writing and her presentations explore basic issues all runners face, like fear, self-confidence and determination. “I wish someone had told me when I was young that I was tougher than I thought,” she says. “I still have to realize that; we all do. If something’s outside of your comfort zone, that’s what’s worthwhile.”
For Tough, stepping into her running shoes and outside of her comfort zone started when she was an unhappy teenager, and led to the highest mountain ranges in the world. For the rest of us, the important lesson is not that we should all end up as record-setting ultrarunners, but that we are born to take on challenges that may at first seem impossible.
David Smart is the editorial director at Gripped Publishing.
Tough is deeply interested in the peoples and cultures of the mountains she runs. “The more difficult the conditions people live in,” she says, “the more hospitable they often are.”