The Snowman Race

An ArcGIS Storymap of a five-day high altitude stage race through the Bhutanese Himalayas — harnessing mountain running as a messenger for climate action

In 2022 I found myself in Thimphu, the capital of Bhutan, sitting alongside a small group of fellow runners inside an ornate building, talking with His Majesty The King of Bhutan, Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck.

Two days before, we had completed the inaugural edition of the Snowman Race, a five-day stage race through northern Bhutan designed to use mountain runners as witnesses to the climate crisis and messengers for action.

29 runners from the U.S., Canada, Japan, Australia, France, Germany, Singapore, Tanzania, Switzerland, Bhutan, and the UK were chosen based on the combination of their commitment to climate advocacy and mountain running ability.

The runners — 20 international and 9 Bhutanese — were tasked with a simple yet profound mission: to race across a linkup of traditional trails and highland villages in fragile mountain ecosystems experiencing some of the earliest and worst effects of climate change, and to share what we'd seen.

This is the story of this life-changing trip, built on the ArcGIS Storymaps platform to deliver an immersive multi-media storytelling experience.