Words by Like the Wind – Photography supplied by The North Face
Katie Schide is perhaps a bit of a loner. She certainly seems happy with her own company and that of a handful of people close to her. Katie doesn’t mind living in a tiny hamlet in the Southern French Alps, where a coffee shop or grocery store is a three hour round trip away. It’s a hamlet where none of the houses have numbers, because the postman (who comes, as long as the road up the valley hasn’t been closed by rockfalls or avalanches) knows every resident by name. But at the same time, Katie is connected in spirit to a great legacy of female trail runners who make up and have long been part of The North Face’s trail team. Katie is following in the footsteps of some incredible athletes.
From an early age, there were signs that Katie might be destined for a life that included mountains, although not necessarily for greatness in those mountains. Katie was born in 1992 in a small town – population just under 6,000 people – called Gardiner, Maine. Nestling alongside the Kennebec River, Gardiner is surrounded by wilderness, including the Green Mountain National Forest, the White Mountain National Forest and the Acadia National Park.
It was into these wild places that young Katie ventured, with her parents and sister, on family trips taking advantage of the closeness of the forests. During high school vacations, Katie and her dad would hike sections of Vermont’s Long Trail that winds its way over 273 miles through the Green Mountains, north towards the Canadian border.
By the time Katie was at graduate school in Salt Lake City, her love of spending time in the mountains had extended to running on the trails. On 27 June 2015, aged just 23, she raced the 28-mile Logan Peak trail race in Utah. It was her first official trail race and she won it, coming sixth overall. Later that year, in November, she won the Antelope Island 50km in Syracuse, Utah.
Then in 2017, Katie ventured further afield, tackling the Festival des Templiers 73km course in Millau, France. She came sixth behind athletes including Ruth Croft, Ida Nilsson, Emelie Forsberg and Mimmi Kotka – some of the best trail runners in the world at the time. Whilst Katie might not have been capturing too much attention outside of the inner world of trail running at this point, her abilities were not escaping the notice of people closer to home. In an interview in 2024, Patricia Hart – Katie’s mother – said of her victory at the Antelope Island race that “she was so far ahead of anyone else, I just couldn’t quite believe it.”
Soon enough, Katie’s results did start to catch the eye of the broader running community. And it appeared that she could follow in the footsteps of some formidable women who had been part of The North Face trail team in the past.
In 2005, a completely unknown runner by the name of Lizzy Hawker arrived in Chamonix, France seeking adventure. The Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc (UTMB) was only two years old at that point and Lizzy was able to sign up for a place just a week before the race. She hadn’t owned a pair of trail shoes until 10 days before the start of the event and, despite having run several road marathons, Lizzy had no idea what to expect on the foot trip around the Mont Blanc. Nevertheless, Lizzy won that first race and then backed it up with another four victories in 2008, 2010, 2011 and 2012 – the later years as part of The North Face elite team.
When Lizzy was lining up for her second attempt at the UTMB in 2010, another athlete would become part of The North Face trail team, testing herself for the first time on the trip around the Mont Blanc. Fernanda Maciel had come to Chamonix from Brazil. But Fernanda’s introduction to trail running was not what one might expect: as a child she had trained as a gymnast – taking Nadia Comăneci, the gold medal winning Romanian who was the first to ever achieve a score of perfect 10 in 1976 – as her inspiration. After that, Fernanda started competing as a capoeira fighter and later became a Brazilian jiu-jitsu champion. It was only after all that, in her early twenties – that Fernanda turned her sights on trail running. Between 2010 – when she finished fourth behind Lizzy – and 2018, Fernanda racked up four podium finishes at the UTMB.
After Fernanda’s first two attempts at the UTMB, a new force exploded onto the trail racing scene. Rory Bosio was 29 in 2013 when she started the 100-mile race as a relatively unknown The North Face athlete. She obliterated the course record, winning in a time of 22h37m26s and beating all but six of the men in the race. The following year, Rory backed up that astonishing first race by winning again, this time beating the second-place woman by over an hour and a half. Rory would return to the race twice more in 2018 and 2019.
In 2020, as the world shut down in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic, there was no UTMB. But waiting for her chance was an athlete ready to take the baton from The North Face trail team predecessors.
After a stint in Zurich studying for a PhD in Geology (with a focus on landslides), Katie met French trail runner Germain Grangier through a mutual friend. Not long after, she moved to live with Germain in the Mercantour National Park in France. To say this is an isolated place would be an understatement – the population of their hamlet in winter is 60 people and the nearest decent grocery store is a 90-minute drive away. But Katie and Germain have made the most of the peace and quiet to train their minds and bodies for their mountain exploits. Which brings us to 2024 and a really remarkable double.
In April 2024, Schide left France and flew to San Francisco, California and on to Auburn for the Canyons 100km race, which follows a course that includes sections of the Western States Endurance Run route. Katie crushed the opposition, beating the second-placed woman by almost an hour and finishing sixth overall. After that emphatic victory, Katie headed to Flagstaff, Arizona where she continued to train (and enjoy having cafes and grocery stores just down the road).
Then, on Saturday 29 June, Katie returned to Auburn – nestled in the northern California foothills of the Sierra Nevada range – to take on a stellar field at the 51st Western States 100-mile race. In a repeat of her race at Canyons a few weeks earlier, Katie ended up competing with herself and the course record. She finished more than half an hour ahead of the second-placed woman, narrowly missing the record with a finishing time of 15h46m57s – the second-fastest finish by a woman ever (pictured above: her 2023 finish).
And all of this was just the appetizer for what Katie says is her true goal in Chamonix. “From the beginning, my focus has always been the UTMB,” says Katie, “because – to be honest – the course itself inspires me more than most other races. You know, it’s pretty iconic.”
At 6pm on Friday 31 August, the starting line of the 2024 UTMB had all the hype and intensity that fans have come to expect from this race. The conditions looked favourable. And the women’s field was packed with some of the best trail runners in the world. Katie, decked out in The North Face’s new Yves Klein blue kit and latest high-performance footwear, appeared calm and smiled broadly as the countdown began.
But once the gun was fired, it was all business. Katie surged into the lead of the women’s race and never really looked like being challenged. 22h09m31s later, Katie cruised up the finish funnel to break the tape, setting a new women’s course record by 21 minutes. She turned towards the crowds, lifted her arms high in the air to acknowledge their cheers, took a shallow bow and seemed to pause for a moment to take it all in.
Katie is one of only four athletes to have ever won the Western States Endurance Run and the UTMB in the same season. And as Katie returns to the simple life in France, she brings back the attitude that is part of what sets her apart: “I just feel this excitement. I think, ‘OK, I’m gonna go train really well. Prepare really well.’ Because if I don’t, I’m gonna know on race day.”
Well, so far the training has clearly been on point. And the trail running world knows that Katie is carrying a torch, deepening the legacy of women’s trail running.
