Project: Faces of Western States

The Western States Endurance Run is a 100-mile race from Squaw Valley, CA to Auburn, CA. This is a serious event and as such I wanted to capture the event around midway through to see how the athletes were holding up: physically, mentally, and emotionally. I parked in Foresthill and hiked down to the trail some 3-4 miles away from town to see these runners away from the busy aid station in Foresthill. I was far enough away from the places you would normally encounter spectators that I thought that I could get a good reaction as runners encountered another human far from civilization. These images tell the story.