This painting is quite personal because it is about a race which truly became part of me. I have been to the Crowsnest Pass to run this event 5 times and it took 2 "successful failures" with DNF at 102 and 106 kilometers the first two years to finally complete it. On attempt 3 in 2016 I was able to get it done in 27 hours and 29 minutes. Following that I repeated this success in 2018 and then had to pull out half way in 2019 due to near trench foot from the wet conditions.

The 30 hour time limit means a runner has to get 100 miles and over 20,000 vertical feet of climbing and descending rocky/muddy/rough trails done by running all day and all night. The course beats us up every time!

The amazing thing about this race is the scenery. Set in the Crowsnest Pass in Alberta, Canada, Sinister 7 presents all the rugged beauty of this mountain pass that connects the flatter parts of Alberta to the mountainous parts and then through to British Columbia. In fact leg 5 of the race places us on the continental divide and the border between Alberta and BC.

We see the massive Frank Slide where the entire top of a mountain range fractured and slid, burying a mining town. We run through rough exposed areas where forest fires had cleared a whole section of a mountain. Multiple mountains are climbed into the evening and then the spectacle of billions of stars takes shape with a black outline of Crowsnest mountain blotting out stars on the horizon. I experienced dawn at 8,500 feet ASL as the mountains lit up every shade of pink, red then orange. One amazing vista is replaced by another one and another milestone on the journey to the finish is checked off.

It is truly an emotional and even spiritual experience to complete this thing as a solo runner. So it is no surprise that I had to paint this and several other scenes from this area and even this one from the racecourse.

To provide a sense of scale I added a "mini me" as I was running on this rugged gravel road that descended into a valley. I think it shows how small and insignificant I was compared to this vast landscape. Well that's how I felt anyway.

Despite this comparison of scale I felt so at one with the universe, filled with love for nature and my fellow human beings on this journey of the race, and the journey of life itself.

Sinister 7 - 24x18 oil on canvas.