We understand that many participants have been studying maps, the GPX files of the route and spending many days out in the hills of Wales reccying the route. At this stage we are confirming all the Mandatory Route sections of the event. Please note that if a section of the route is shown as Mandatory then it is essential that it is followed in its entirety from start to finish.

We are now in a position to confirm the Berghaus Dragon's Back Race™ route for 2017. The route will be approximately 315km with 15,500m of height gain.​ You can compare the 2017 route with the 1992, 2012 and 2015 races in the table below:

We have carefully reviewed the split times of every participant that finished later than our 23:00 Course Closure Time in 2015, and working back through their splits, we have revised the Cut-off Times so that participants travelling at the same speed in 2017, will be Cut-off. Essentially, we are making the Cut-off Times more challenging, but this should affect only runners who would not have made the 23:00 Course Closure Time. We are doing this because runners finishing very late (in 2015, some finished after 01:00 in the morning!) disproportionately affect the event; image that our admin team, medical team, safety team, catering team all must stay up until the last finisher is accounted for, all the while the generator and lighting needs to stay on, which affects all the participants.

The following advice is to help 2017 participants avoid any access and routing frustrations during any reconnaissance trips that you may have the luxury to enjoy!

We are soon to issue the final version of the route, after a winter period of route review. In the background, we are also soon to commit the map to the printers, via our mapping partner Harvey Maps. Generally this review has been to finesse the Recommended Route for best flow, least resistance and most intuitive navigability.

Please note the article below is purely fictitious - It was released on April Fool’s Day 2017.

In an eleventh hour move, organisers of the 2017 Berghaus Dragon's Back Race™ have announced that the final day of the race will be extended to reach Mumbles, Swansea Bay. The decision was confirmed on the back of feedback from 2015 race winner Jim Mann, who pointed out that the traverse of Wales previously finished an unsatisfying ~20 miles inland at Llandeilo.

We’ve got some really exciting developments for all participants ahead of May.

We will be publishing the final route around the end of March, which will confirm the long-awaited detail on the mandatory and recommended sections. We’re happy to confirm at this point that the mandatory sections are minimal.

As we write, course planner Gary is out in the field putting the finishing touches to the 2017 mapping work. So what’s changed you might ask? How much is there really to change since 2015?

The 4th edition of the Berghaus Dragon’s Back Race takes place this May 22nd-26th 2017. The race, now one of the top bucket list running events in the world, first took place in 1992 before being rekindled in 2012 by Shane Ohly of Ourea Events. By 2015, the race had earned itself the tagline of the ‘toughest mountain race in the world’.

Final route testing is underway!

The 2017 Berghaus Dragon’s Back Race™ route is now being finalised and Race Director Shane Ohly joined by Course Director Gary Tompsett have recently returned from a thorough review of days 2 and 3.

The 2017 Berghaus Dragon’s Back Race™ route details, GPX files, and 2017 provisional route data are now available online, and as such we feel it would be unfair to attempt to artificially reinvent the route in 2017. After the 2015 event we stated that the we did not want to continually reinvent the course, and that we would therefore make GPX files of the route available for participants if they wished to use a GPS device.