Rocky Mountain Ham, Colorado AuxComm, and Several ARES members provided communications and health and welfare tracking for nearly 500 runners at the annual Dirty 30 Trail Race in Golden Gate Canyon. We had twenty eight hams there to support the event and ensure that the runners made it to their destination safely. The course uses 30 miles of the 35 miles of trail in the Golden Gate Canyon State Park of which most of it is not covered with cellular service!
The RMHAM Tech Team of Willem Schreuder, AC0KQ, Ben Matthews, KC2VJW, Tracy Helmhold, KI0HC, John Maxwell, W0VG, Chris Hamilton, AE5IT, Chris DePuy, WB0ITX, Jon Blome, KF0JB and several other hams built a large microwave network for providing reliable IP communications for all of the aid stations in the park.
Without this support, it would be significantly more difficult to handle the mass influx of runners through the aid stations and keep track of them. At one point in the course, the aid station had 210 runners through in an 5 minute period! That would have been quite challenging to get that recorded manually!
It was a challenging and rewarding weekend and a fantastic learning experience! Kudos to all.