This time last year, the general assumption was the Emperor’s Challenge was no longer going to be able to be held on Mount Babcock.
Then-race director Manda Maggs told us that “a major re-route is going to have to be done. We’re pretty much losing half the course. It might get shifted to another mountain. Conuma has offered to assist with like the logistics. But when it was moved from Roman to Babcock, lots of different options were considered and there really isn’t a great third option.”
So the future of the race? Was bleak. There were even ads celebrating the “last run up Babcock.”
But here we are, days away from the 2026 Emperor’s Challenge, which will follow the same route as last year. What gives?
In a word: Conuma. The company has figuratively moved mountains to allow the race to continue along its current route.
As well, the planning committee has seen a number of new (and old) faces come on board, including new co-chairs Kristopher Swanson and Deanne McDoom.
While the latter name may be new to many people, the former should be familiar. Swanson grew up in Tumbler Ridge and has run the race every year since the beginning, winning every race save one.
He says he’s not the first runner in the history of the Emperor’s Challenge to transition into more of an organizational role in the history of the Emperor’s Challenge; indeed, the race director also ran the race 12 of the first 16 races.
And for the last number of years, Swanson has been providing feedback and advice to the planning committee. “I’ve offered suggestions based on my experience with mountain races in other parts of the world: things that worked really well over here and maybe didn’t work well over here, and just shared some ideas. But that’s really the limit of kind of what I have offered the race before up until stepping into the role of co-race director.”
Joining him as co-director is McDoom, another runner (she’s done the Emperor’s Challenge four times over the last few years), but one with a little more experience on the planning side of things. This is her first time as race director, says McDoom, but she has done a lot of work planning races in the past. “I’ve worked under a lot of great race directors down in the lower mainland: the Coast Mountain Trail Running Series and Five Peaks to name a few, doing volunteer coordinating, course managing, and just getting really behind the scenes on those races and seeing all the logistics.”
Swanson says they came into planning the Emperor’s Challenge with an idea of how things might play out, but the best laid plans, as they say. “Every day is a new curveball that’s thrown at you,” he says.
The two came on board at the start of 2026, and, according to McDoom, were already behind. “We always kind of felt like, we were playing catch up. Always being reactive: we’ve got to do this. We’ve got to do that. We should have done that already.”
But the saving grace, says McDoom has been the rest of the planning committee. “It was a learning curve for us, but having the committee was a huge help. They really got us up to speed and helped do things that we couldn’t do, because neither of us is local: connecting with the volunteers, with the companies, with sponsors. All of those things that we couldn’t do locally. It’s just been a lot of learning and relying on other people to help.
Rather than both work on the same tasks, they split the work, with McDoom doing much of the technical side of things, from getting the registration site set up to setting up vendors for tents and porta potties. “We have an awesome volunteer coordinator, Barbi [Mackenzie], who’s taken on a huge chunk. I didn’t realize at the beginning how much she was going to take on, so trying to figure out the finish line food and understanding how all that pieces fit together. Meanwhile Swanson focused on dealing with setting up sponsorships, T-shirts and medals.
Speaking of T-shirts, this year, the design was done by local artist Joan Zimmer. “On the back we have our sponsors, we also have a dedication to honor those most closely impacted after February 10,” says Swanson. “To honour those folks, we have added their names to the back of the shirt this year. As well, the colour of the shirt is a tribute to the Tumbler Ridge Secondary School and the Kodiaks mascot. We have put the names in the outline of the Kodiak school symbol.
McDoom says it’s fitting that Swanson worked so hard on the shirt design. “He went to that school. His history is pretty deep with Tumbler Ridge, with the community. He ran cross country with the school team.”
While this could be seen as a new dawn for the race, Swanson says the goal for this year was to keep it as familiar as possible. “Out objective from the beginning was to keep the traditions of the Emperor’s Challenge as is, If anything we want to do our best to make it as efficient as possible and those would be the only changes that we were trying to implement. Of course, there’s some things that do change throughout the process regardless, but they are fluid in any race director’s journey.”
There are 511 adults racing this year, and 56 kids. While the race didn’t hit its cap of 1000, the numbers are still strong, says Swanson. “We’re still over five hundred for a mountain race, so there’s no there’s no stress there about having to fill up. We just focused on moving forwards and keeping the quality up for the participants that are continuing to come out.”
McDoom says she’s glad the race isn’t full. “We started off in a bit of a deficit, and when we finally got registration up and running, we were trying to push the numbers and figure out how to promote the race. But we were having a committee meeting and someone said that we didn’t need to try and hit the cap. We had a healthy number of runners. It felt a lot better. It felt like ‘okay, we can relax a little bit and so let’s just focus on just delivering a really good event.’”
One of the biggest changes is to the course. As of 2025, the run no longer goes up and over the summit. “There’s certain areas that we just couldn’t have access to,” says Swanson. “But with huge support from Conuma, we were able to make a few alterations to the course and continue on racing.”
While one of the alterations means the runners have to avoid the summit, Swanson argues that it’s a nicer route. “You get a nice little dip into a valley, passing by another little lake. It’s a beautiful little detour.”
Over the next few days, the two are going to be putting in a lot of work, getting the last minute details ready. “This week is definitely a crunch,” says McDoom. “Everything comes together this week. We have such an amazing committee. Members of our committee are taking hold of some big tasks. Conuma is helping with aid stations. There’s going to be a lot of coordination of getting the supplies ready and sending them off to the mountain. Barbi is handling a lot of the volunteer coordination. Race packages need to be assembled and ready for pick-up on Friday.”
Trent is the publisher of Tumbler RidgeLines.
