Dipsea Shortcuts

Since 1905, the Dipsea Race has started in Mill Valley and finished, on the opposite side of Mt. Tamalpais, in Stinson Beach. But just how runners got there has been a matter of choice, as long as it was on foot.

            Members of the Marin Athletic Club floated balloons above the redwoods to identify the absolutely shortest path. When a new home was built across the trail on Panoramic Highway at Bayview Drive, runners continued streaming through even as the owner ramped up defensive measures. One runner cut through a yard to reach the finish line from the opposite direction. A homeowner on the Dipsea steps built tall fencing to keep runners out. In 1983, Ron Rahmer blazed a new route that avoided almost all the Dipsea Trail and improved 92 places, to 13th, from the prior year. At least two top-ten finishers were caught getting a ride part of the way, and banned for life. The never quiescent issue of Dipsea shortcuts is in the news again this year as two ancient ones, Suicide and Swoop, are now so overgrown and eroded that some runners are hesitant to take them.  

            Before each race officials place ribbons to mark a “consensus” route and publish “course restrictions,” currently ten of them. All top competitors veer off this marked course onto the shortcuts of Suicide before Muir Woods, Swoop a mile beyond Cardiac, and Panoramic Highway a mile from the finish. In total, these three bypasses shorten the 7.5-mile course by about one-third mile. Many racers use additional shortcuts, some permitted, some marginal at best, some shared with others, some zealously guarded.

            When the Dipsea Race was first contested in 1905, all the route (then called the Lone Tree Trail) west of Mill Valley was privately owned, most of it by one man, William Kent. Kent was leading a movement to make Mt. Tamalpais a national park and kept his lands open to hikers. In 1908, he donated Muir Woods to the people of the United States, then become the lead proponent for creation of both the Marin Municipal Water District and Mt. Tamalpais State Park. On the day before he died in 1928, he donated Steep Ravine, the signature section of the Dipsea Trail, to the new State Park.

            Much of the original race route crossed dairy land, with at least 15 cattle stiles to be negotiated. Perhaps no one expected runners to veer off the path as, for decades, no course restrictions were cited. There were many instances of runners getting hopelessly lost, but apparently none of a runner disqualified for taking a shortcut.

            The situation clearly began changing by the 1930s when Jack Kirk and Norman Bright, two charter members of the Dipsea Race Hall of Fame, both began exploiting shortcuts. Finding shortcuts became part of the Dipsea’s “open course” lore.

            The first formal course restrictions—closing Moose Hill and a mandatory left turn onto Highway 1 at Stinson--were reluctantly placed by race organizers in 1977. The race had passed 2,000 entrants, backing up the finish line and blocking roads for residents and emergency vehicles. The Marin County Board of Supervisors, which then included Barbara Boxer, threatened to stop the Dipsea.

            Over the years, more restrictions have been added. Some were mandated by land managers to protect environmentally sensitive habitat, such as no shortcuts through Muir Woods National Monument or between Cardiac and Swoop. Some restrictions came from race organizers, such as a ban on running across private property and several to insure no one duplicated Rahmer’s potentially disruptive shortcut.

            Shortcuts are a divisive issue among Dipsea racers. One veteran opposed to aggressive shortcutting declined to comment for this story, saying the issue has already caused too many arguments with friends. There are extremists who cut paths, a violation everywhere on Mt. Tam, and runners who cover their bib number during the race to avoid detection by rangers. Many chastise this fringe group, citing damage to the land and the risk to the race’s future. Others defend them on principle, noting that the Dipsea Race predates all public land units on Mt. Tamalpais. Newcomers to the Dipsea, who have watched a runner they just passed somehow mysteriously reappear just ahead, feel the shortcuts are an unfair disadvantage to locals. A faction says it is finally time to embrace use of a single route, as in virtually every other running race, or race of any kind. Some feel the Dipsea, with its myriad of restrictions, has all but already reached this point.

            Roy Rivers, the 2008 winner and a Dipsea Foundation Board member, is one who feels shortcuts are integral to the race.

“From a runner's perspective, I would say that the open course nature of the Dipsea Race is an essential part of its je ne sais quoi,” Rivers says. “It lends the race that certain unique character that makes the Dipsea ‘The Greatest Race.’ In my opinion the Dipsea Committee has done an excellent job of preserving that as much as possible while shepherding the race into the modern era.”

            Russ Kiernan is a three-time champion famous for his knowledge of shortcuts, which he prefers to call “alternative options.” In 1979 he famously followed one such option; it proved a mistake and cost him the victory.

            “I feel part of the lure of the race is having the alternate options,” Kiernan says. “I think it actually makes it safer because the fast, crazed runners are not passing slower runners going down to Muir Woods and down the Gail Scott Trail. I wish people would leave places like Suicide and Swoop alone.”

            Changes may be coming but at the 102nd Dipsea Race on June 10, runners will once again prove there is more than one way to Stinson Beach.