Death in the Stone Forest

Why did 21 runners die competing in an ultramarathon in China? Turns out, a freak weather event wasn’t the only problem.

- By Ryan Ho Kilpatrick

At around 3 p.m. on May 22, Kong Ming received a phone call from the organizing committee of the Yellow River Stone Forest mountain race, a trail ultramarathon in a remote part of northwest China he was coordinating transportation for. The committee member on the other end of the line told him a runner had been injured around the third of the 100-kilometer course’s nine checkpoints. The man asked Kong to bring some warm clothes and help the injured man down the mountain.

Checkpoint three (CP3), located at the summit of a brutal climb considered the race’s hardest section, was the event’s only unmanned checkpoint. It was also the only one not accessible by road.

As Kong neared the ridge crest, he spotted plumes of smoke coming from one of the small caves used as shelters by local shepherds. Inside, six runners huddled around a small fire, shaking uncontrollably. Their skin was turning blue.

A short, thin man in his 50s stepped out of an adjacent cave. A local shepherd, the man told Kong he’d helped five of the people in the cave down from the mountain. One had found his own way there. There were more uphill he couldn’t help.