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Mud season is a fact of life every spring for ski resorts across North America. Shops close, lodges are mostly vacant, and people, except maybe for maintenance workers in mud-coated boots, are scarce.

So how did Vermont’s Mount Snow draw more than 14,000 people and sell out nearly every room in the valley May 7-8 during Mother’s Day weekend? Mud. Lots of sticky, gooey, sloppy, mud. Mount Snow hosted back-to-back days of Tough Mudder, an event that puts individuals and teams through a zany and very muddy 10- to 12-mile obstacle course with more than two dozen challenging features.

Started in 2010, Tough Mudder is one of several new national event series that test the strength, stamina and mental toughness of willing participants from all walks of life via a romp through the mud. Tough Mudder events—and other similar series like Muddy Buddy, Warrior Dash, Spartan Race, Champions MudBash, Down and Dirty National Mud Run—have found great success at ski resorts around North America, including Whistler-Blackcomb, Beaver Creek, Copper Mountain, Devil’s Head Resort, Squaw Valley, Killington, Soldier Hollow, Amesbury Sports Park and Horseshoe Resort. All have drawn big crowds to play in the mud, some creating mud season tourism and others boosting otherwise robust summer business.

These events have simply exploded overnight. Last summer, while brainstorming for new events to boost offseason visitor numbers, Mount Snow marketing and events director Vinnie Lewis got a tip about the mud racing phenomenon from a friend who had participated in a Tough Mudder event. He contacted the organization through its website, explained Mount Snow’s history of putting on big events, and passed it up the chain to the resort’s management team.

“It was unlike any event we’ve ever had,” says Lewis. “I don’t think this place has ever seen that many people during mud season. The entire valley was sold out. It really helped fill beds during a time when they’d probably be mostly empty. It was a match made in heaven for us.”


ACCESSIBLE CHALLENGE
These newfangled mud events have roots in sports like trail running and adventure racing, but most point back to Muddy Buddy, the original American mud racing event that started in San Diego in 1999 and went nationwide the following year. The concept for that event was based on the niche endurance sport of ride and tie, in which two people alternate between running and riding a horse over a course that might be 25 miles long. The mud phenomenon started to take off in 2010, then went white-hot this past summer.

Why the sudden popularity? “I think part of the reason is that people are just bored of running races on pavement,” says Alex Patterson, Tough Mudder’s chief marketing officer. “Don’t get me wrong, marathons and triathlons are great, but what we bring are new, unique challenges that people are really intrigued with. When people do our events, the stories they tell are ‘I ran through fire’ or ‘I ran through electric shock’ or ‘I swam through freezing cold water’ or ‘I crawled on my belly under barbed wire.’ The stories tell themselves.”

With Tough Mudder obstacles ranging from mud pits, cargo nets and slippery walls to underwater tunnels, fire pits and even electric shock zones, there’s always something waiting around the corner. It’s not a race, but a battle of attrition for individuals and teams of up to 10. While each event series is different, getting wet and muddy is the common theme.

Unlike triathlons, which require a lot of gear, or even marathon running, which requires months and months of training, Tough Mudder is all about the experience. Obstacles aren’t mandatory, so they can be passed without penalty or disqualification.

“Tough Mudder is really the opposite of traditional running races and triathlons. We’re really stripping it all down and putting people face-down in dirt,” Patterson says. “Yeah, you need to have a certain level fitness, but in terms of gear or things you need to buy, we encourage people to wear their oldest, dirtiest running shoes. It’s definitely a different mentality. Fitness has become so rationalized and it’s gotten away from being an escape from our everyday lives, but that’s exactly what Tough Mudder is all about.

“Everyone who finishes has earned being a Tough Mudder and everybody is part of the tribe,” Patterson says. “Whereas with a triathlon, you look at the results board and you realize you’re 245th out of 500 in your age group. And you kind of leave with a sense that you could have done better. At Tough Mudder, it doesn’t matter how long it takes you to finish.”

And, um, what’s not to like about playing in the mud with your buddies, co-workers or significant other? “It was a blast,” says Rick Guthke, who competed on a six-person team at Beaver Creek Resort in Avon, Colo., in late June. “I had never done anything like that at all.”

It helps, too, that these events have become full-blown spectacles. Most mud events combine the obstacle course event with a festival-type atmosphere, often with a post-race party and live music, that appeal to competitors and spectators alike. Because the events start competitors in different waves, the action lasts all day, which allows base village shops and restaurants to share in the bounty.

Mount Snow promoted the event throughout the winter, hanging posters in local shops, putting photos and news updates on its website, and giving away orange headbands. Registration opened last fall, and the first date sold out in a few months. Participants paid $80 to $180 to enter (ranging from early bird discounts to last-minute entries) and also spent a lot of money before and after at area shops and restaurants.


DASHING THROUGH THE MUD
Ditto for Copper Mountain when it hosted the Warrior Dash, a shorter event that is decidedly a race to the finish, in 2010. The event was initially planned as a single day of racing, but when that event quickly filled its field of 10,000, a second day of racing was added and 3,000 more people signed up. Those numbers increased by another 3,000 at the second annual event in late August 2011.

“Both last year and this year, the first day sold out quickly and then they added a second day,” says Dave Roth, public relations coordinator at Copper Mountain. “During Warrior Dash, it’s as busy as a winter day. It’s smack dab in the middle of summer, and that’s absolutely amazing for us. We’ve been focusing on growing summer business for the past several years, so it’s great to have the village full of animation and music and people having a great time.”

Amesbury Sports Park in Massachusetts reported similar success with the Warrior Dash and two Spartan Race events it hosted in 2010 and 2011. The Spartan Race drew 2,500 for its one-day event in 2010, but drew double that on both of two days this year. Meanwhile, Warrior Dash drew more than 19,000 participants over two days, by far the biggest event the gravity thrill park has ever hosted. In both cases, most hotels in a 45-minute radius sold out for the entire weekend.

Amesbury received a flat facility fee for the event and for setup days, and kept the receipts for all beer sales. The rest—registration fees, parking, food and souvenir sales—went to event organizers. Like many venues, Amesbury helped collect and clean old athletic shoes (many of which were used in the race) and donated them to organizations in Third World countries. The local food pantry also received a charitable donation.

The flat fees helped cover some of the wear and tear the park experienced during the events, and each “was a huge success for us in a lot of ways,” says Meredith Robinson, Amesbury’s director of sales. “There was some legwork and logistics that we assisted with, but at the end of the day, all we were really responsible for was for the beer sales. It was profitable and it was a really good marketing opportunity for us. We definitely brought in some new faces, people who had never heard of our park before.”


LOGISTICS
Tough Mudder looks for sites of at least 400 acres that are within two to three hours of a major metropolitan area, preferably with hills, ponds and plenty of parking. Hosting events on private land is ideal, Patterson says, but partnering with a resort that has a relationship with the U.S. Forest Service or other land agencies has worked well, too. Ski areas match up well with all these criteria.

Tough Mudder has its own construction crew to build the specialized obstacles in the weeks before the event, but it often requires some advance work from the resort. Mount Snow started to prep the terrain last fall before snow began to fly. One of the obstacles required participants to walk across a series of ropes suspended over a large pond. The ropes were suspended from a series of large utility poles the resort sunk into the ground last fall. “While it’s great to get people to the resort during mud season, it can be a nightmare to work on the mountain at that time,” Lewis says.

At Beaver Creek, the resort’s mountain and village operations teams began working on the event in late spring and continued to develop the course, build structures and support the event. The Beaver Creek ski patrol provided medical support; transportation crews shuttled guests from the base of the mountain to areas on the course; and the mountain team synched up with and worked alongside the Tough Mudder staff.

Patterson is quick to note that Tough Mudder events are environmentally friendly and that the company’s teams work with the resort crews to deconstruct structures and clean up. “We return the land, vegetation and roads to the same condition they were in before the event,” he says.

The crowds make all the work worthwhile. “Tough Mudder provided a unique opportunity to bring a diverse audience to Beaver Creek,” says Doug Lovell, COO of Beaver Creek. “The event has a strong following, and from a participant numbers perspective, we recognized that it had the potential to bring not only competitors, but also spouses, friends and families to the resort, which it did. Many of these individuals had not visited Beaver Creek and we hope that for the competitors, they will return in the winter to ski on some of the trails they ran up or over.”

Who would have thought there is so much upside to mud?


To see some more images and videos of these races, check out our SAM CAM and click on Warrior Dash and Summer Ops 2011.