Master Of Most

A Jack of All Mountain Trades, Gavin Woody Is a Glutton for Fun, or Suffering—or Maybe Both

- Yitka Winn

Gavin Woody’s alarm clock goes off at 4:30 a.m. most mornings. His car is a roving gear locker of shoes, packs, ropes, helmets and hard goods—ready for whatever mountains, rivers or singletrack the day might bring. “It’s not an elegant thing,” he says. “I just get up in the morning and ask myself, ‘What haven’t I done enough of lately?’ It’s fun learning new stuff; I like the ‘master of none’ thing.”

Except that Woody, 40, of Bellevue, Washington, is quite the opposite. He’s an accomplished mountaineer, skier, triathlete, mountain biker, rock climber and yogi. He’s finished self-supported runs of California’s 211-mile John Muir Trail, and Washington’s 12-peak Tatoosh Traverse and Infinity Loop—a double summit of Mount Rainier and complete circumnavigation of the peak in a single, 99-hour push. His racing resume reads like a bucket list of the world’s most grueling races— Badwater, Tor des Geants, Dragon’s Back, UTMB, Susitna 100, Arrowhead 135, Plain, HURT, Western States, Bigfoot 200, Moab 240—with a handful of podium finishes among them.

“I search for races with the lowest finishing rates. Those are the ones I want to do,” says Woody, whose bright blue eyes and broad smile convey a mix of enthusiasm and humility.

While most people might have to relinquish all responsibilities and societal obligations to pull off the kind of adventures Woody pursues, he’s no dirtbag living alone in a van; he works full-time as the vice president of operations at a senior-care resource company called A Place for Mom. He’s also a loving husband, devoted father to two young kids, an Army veteran and Airborne Ranger, West Point grad, Stanford MBA grad, wilderness advocate, former board president of the outdoor-recreation advocacy group The Mountaineers and a regular volunteer on the trails.