Snow adds another element of difficulty to the Race to Robie Creek

BOISE, Idaho — The Race to Robie Creek is a half-marathon where runners gain more than 2,000 feet in elevation during the climb to Aldape Summit, it's considered one of the hardest half-marathons in the northwest and this year there will be another challenge runners will have to overcome.

The race starts at noon on Saturday, on Thursday afternoon we drove up Shaw Mountain Road to check out the conditions we found that where the road turns to gravel it is dry and good to go for two miles.

The next mile puddles started to form and all of a sudden in the next mile we found the road covered in snow we also found Danielle Marquette who was training for the race, she's done the Race to Robie Creek half a dozen times.

"It’s a great race, it has a lot of community support I’m a trail runner so I like running in these kinds of conditions," said Marquette. "I just didn’t expect to do it in mid-April."

I didn't make it to Aldape Summit because I didn't want to get stuck, Danielle went further than me and it made us both wonder how the backside would be as we both thought the draw going back down will be snowy and slippery because it doesn't get much sun.

"It’s several inches deep up there I don’t know what the backside looks like, but I can imagine it is quite a bit more, said Danielle Marquette.

Danielle also volunteered for the packet pickup on Wednesday and she told us a lot of race bibs didn't get picked up, but runners can still pick that up starting at 9:45 a.m. at the starting line, but it will be interesting to see how the weather impacts the runners and the race.

“It’s hard to know," said Marquette. "I think it is going to be a really interesting year, I think the times are going to be a lot longer than normal."

We also talked with Brian Rencher on the phone who is one of the race organizers and part of the Rocky Mountain Sail Toads, he says ACHD will be plowing the road on Friday and Boise County will be working on the backside.

He also told us they have put together a gear bus that runners can put a bag on to have dry clothes, a jacket and anything else they want at the finish line.

There are two runners currently running the course and the Race to Robie Creek Facebook Page will have more updates as they become available.

Good luck to all the runners, fans can show up for the start of the race but because of the pandemic they will not be allowed to be at the finish line and there will be no end-of-race party this year.

'The last year I ran it was 2017 and it snowed the night before it was a little slick on the backside," said Marquette. "But no never anything like this, this is pretty crazy.”