Kodiak 100 Course Ops

A hundred miles in the San Bernardinos. Aid stations, crew access, and a course file that does not live only in someone else's Garmin.

Builder · Personal · 2025

100 mi distance
15 mapped waypoints
UTMB event

Context

Ultra logistics fail when the course only exists as a screenshot in a group chat. For Kodiak 100 (UTMB), I wanted a clean course artifact: start, finish, aid stations, and crew/spectator access points in a file any watch or mapping tool can open.

What I built

A CalTopo-sourced GPX for the 2025 Kodiak Ultra Marathons by UTMB 100 Mile Course, published here as a downloadable ops file. Waypoints include:

  • Start / Finish
  • Crab Flats, Camp Whittle, Holcomb Valley, Doble Camp, Cactus Flats, Burns Canyon, Sugarloaf, Balky Horse, Snow Summit aid stations
  • Snow Summit crew and spectator access

How it worked

Same discipline as the Tahoe work: treat race geography as product data. Named waypoints. Shareable GPX. No mystery pins. The file lives at /data/courses/kodiak-100-2025.gpx so it can be pulled into a watch, CalTopo, or a future crew board without rebuilding from memory.

Outcome

A portable course object for planning and crew briefings, and another personal proof that ops tools should ship as real artifacts, not vibes.

What I’d do next

Pair the GPX with a lightweight web elevation/aid board (same pattern as Crew Chief for Tahoe). Add cutoff notes if the race publishes them in a stable form.