Once athletes pass the interview process, they’re in for a wild ride.
On certain weekday mornings, around 5:30 or 6:00 a.m., a small group of athletes gathers at a trailhead in Boulder, Colorado. From there, they’ll run about a mile or two along the dirt trails that snake up to the base of mountains, gaining elevation as they hop over rocks, roots, and whatever obstacles lie in the path.
Once they reach the top of a slab, they’ll either climb down—again, without equipment—or on steeper sections, fix a rope and rappel to the base, sometimes dropping a hundred feet in just a minute or two. Oftentimes, they’ll repeat said scrambling routine on another slab of rock before booking it back down to the trailhead by 8:00 a.m.These aren’t professional ninjas, stunt people-in-training, or otherwise fit folks with death wishes. They’re Satan’s Minions Scrambling Club.
Bill Wright, 57, , who has a lifelong love of adventure, founded Satan’s Minions more than 20 years ago. After recovering from a back injury, he had a goal to tackle the top-10 climbs in the Flatirons in less than 15 hours.after Wright broke his back on a local climbing route known as Death and Transfiguration. During recovery, he read a Boulder climbing guidebook—by Gerry Roach—and became fixated on tackling what Roach had designated the top-10 climbs in the Flatirons in less than 15 hours .
As for the group’s name? That came from a friend-of-a-friend who Wright has never met. He tells the story like this: Wright invited a co-worker to join an upcoming run/climb, involving something like 5 miles of running, 3,000 feet of vertical gain, and 10 pitches of climbing up to 5.5 grade in difficulty, all before 7:45 a.m. That friend emailed this to another friend who responded: “Jesus Christ! This Bill Wright fellow sounds like one of Satan’s minions.
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