_{Top photo: Sam Lhermillier}

At Run the Alps, the end of the year is a transition time. We’re shifting gears and focussing on next year. As we look forward, we can’t help but look back as well.

Here are a handful of our favorite photos from 2025 that share a bit about our favorite places to trail run in the Alps, and remind us of some great moments, new tours, projects, and initiatives.

It’s been a wonderful year. And through it all, we continue to have a lot of fun both as a team and with our guests. We hope to see you in the Alps soon!

Provence

Our trip season now starts earlier than it has in the past -– we ran our first spring tour in Provence in 2025! For years, the Run the Alps staff has snuck off for early-season trail running here. South of the Alps, we’re able to run in Provence before the snow usually melts from trails in the high mountains. It was time to invite new friends to join us.

Provence is known for its lavender fields, vineyards, and ancient hilltop villages, it is also home to trails that criss-cross its picturesque landscape. During the shoulder seasons (April and May, or September and October) this region in the south of France is a peaceful place to visit. We love it here these months, as it allows trail runners to avoid both the heat and crowds of the busy summer season. We’re running a guided tour here in April 2026, and are excited to announce our new self-guided option: Run Provence: A Self-Guided Trail Running Vacation!

Dolomites

We still can’t get enough of the Italian Dolomites, and now offer three distinct tours in this area (check them out). It’s a region that reminds us, in a way that Italy does best, that running tours aren’t only about running. Coffee, wine, relaxing, watching sunsets, sharing long meals, stopping to stare at all the beautiful sites…and yes, running is also a fantastic excuse for doing all of this too. 

From our guide Cam on a Classic Italian Dolomites Guided trip:  “At the risk of bringing up a highlight of a trail-running tour that has nothing to do with the running part … my favorite memory of this week was relaxing on the grassy terrace outside Hotel Kabis, on our penultimate evening. The temperature was cool, the views over the sunny hillside were serene. Most of our group came out to lie on the grass or on the shady sun-loungers soaking in the moment. After a full day of trail running, exquisite food, and hearty laughs, this piece of serenity was a calming change of pace, and a chance to reflect on the wonderful week we’d just had together.”

Valais

We’re spending more time throughout Switzerland, and the Valais region is one of our favorites. It has most of the country’s 4000-meter peaks. This region has stunning trails, lots of relief, and a fun mix of cultural differences between its French and German speaking zones. The most famous Valais village is Zermatt, but we also visit Zinal, Verbier, Arolla, and some smaller mountain towns on our tours that pass through this mountainous region. Our favorite ways to experience this stunning region are on the Via Valais or Haute Route trips, or by settling into Zinal and the Val d’Anniviers as a self-guided basecamp for day runs.

Zermatt – Matterhorn

Also in the Valais…the Matterhorn is perhaps the most iconic mountain in the world, even lending its shape to the Swiss Toblerone chocolate. As trail runners, it’s always a treat to cruise along with Matterhorn views. Several of our tours spend time in the car-free village of Zermatt, the home of this beautiful mountain: Via Valais, Haute Route, Monte Rosa Circuit, Culinary Trail Tour to name a few. 
Find a guided or self-guided tour to run with us here, meet the adorable blacknose sheep, and soak in the views.

Bernese Oberland

We had several fun tours in Switzerland’s Bernese Oberland. Located in central Switzerland, the area includes some of Switzerland’s most famous scenery and peaks, including the Eiger, Mönch, and Jungfrau. The Lauterbrunnen valley, and the well-known towns of Interlaken, Grindelwald, and Meiringen are all there. We love returning to the trails here every year, for the smooth trails themselves, and for eating lots of cheese.

Our guide Kristians Luņins shares a favorite moment from one of our Classic Bernese Oberland Guided tours:

“The highlight for me, and I think everyone in the group, was the last day of the trip when everything clicked – with a group of ranging ages and experience levels, we all fully enjoyed running in the Alps together. Taking an easier day before this one worked magic – everyone felt fresh and recovered from some challenging days earlier in the week.” 

The Hub, Chamonix

From our homebase in Chamonix, The Hub is our chalet to welcome guests from our tours and others who made Chamonix the basecamp for their own running adventures. In 2025, we hosted weekly events ranging from film screenings, training talks, group runs, yoga and foam rolling, to Silent Sessions. It was a blast and we’re working on a super lineup of events again for 2026. Teaser: two film festivals, a couple of noted authors, and even a James Beard Award-winning chef! We hope you’ll stop by!

TMB and “Essentials” tour tier

We’re excited to introduce a new way to run the Tour du Mont-Blanc with us! Our “Essentials TMB” — a simple, authentic, and more budget-friendly way to run our most popular trip.
Now with four distinct TMB tiers— Deluxe, Classic, Express, and Essentials— we hope that a broader range of runners will be able to find an experience that fits their comfort level, pace, and style of adventure. Compare our TMB trips.

Tour info upgrades

Brendan Leonard (Semi-Rad) and Majell Backhausen tested out our Express TMB Self-Guided tour. Thanks to their efforts, we’ll never look at Mont Blanc and croissants the same. You can read Brendan’s Trip Report: Attempting The Express Tour Du Mont Blanc.

They used our Run the Alps App to guide them through their trip, and that’s another thing we’re really proud of developing further this past year. And along those lines, we also published a new edition of our Guide to Trail Running in the Alps, which tour guests receive. As the year winds down, we’re also making a digital option as part of an upcoming guest portal! 

Guest Runners

Each year we have some wonderful guest runners join our tours. Several are becoming regulars on our tour calendar. In 2025 we ran with Elyse Kopecky, Jen Hansard, Max King, Mirna Valerio, and Yassine Diboun.

Look who’s coming next summer for our 2026 Guest Runners! Some familiar faces and some new runners that we’re looking forward to sharing the trails with.

Besides being a repeat guest runner for several years, in 2025, we started a special “skills” tour with Mirna. From our guides, Emily Geldard and Mike Murray: “Our first Trail Running Skills with the Mirnavator was a fantastic week of learning and exploring the Chamonix trails, enjoying good food and making new friends. Throughout the week the group developed a range of skills – using running poles effectively, moving over technical terrain, navigating in the mountains, understanding kit and safety, and learning about strength, mobility, and injury prevention.”

We Belong

One highlight of the year was working with our friend Zach Friedley. Zach’s an On athlete, the founder of Born to Adapt, and is one of the world’s leading advocates for adaptive trail running. This year, along with Paralympian Dani Aravich and adaptive athlete Jahir Ramos, Run the Alps created a short film called We Belong. Look for it in our 2026 Film Festival, which will launch later this winter. And watch for much more between Zach, Dani, and Run the Alps in the years to come.

Our partners

We continue to work with fabulous partners – nutrition brands who provide products for our tour guests, races here in the Alps and in the US, and a variety of equipment and clothing suppliers, hotels, and local businesses who help make our tours the best they can be. Our partners are a big part of the Run the Alps experience and you can read about them here.

Net-positive

As for our net-positive efforts, we published our Guides’ Guide to Climate and Environmental Issues on the Tour du Mont-Blanc– a 50-page booklet filled with valuable interpretive and environmental information for our guides. (More on that soon, when we launch it publicly and share some exciting news!) We welcomed the first recipients of our Tour Grant Program, co-sponsored the International Trail Running Association’s Women’s Trail Day in Chamonix, and had our first two trip interns as part of a growing partnership with Alpine Run Project.

Using Run the Alps as a force for positive change in the world has been an important part of our DNA since our first day. You can read more about our sustainability and net-positive endeavors here.

Simple things

Our summers are busy and full and nonstop and we love it that way. We’re happiest when we’re sharing our enthusiasm for trail running in the Alps. We also appreciate the quiet moments on home trails when we get them. And we cherish time with our trail dogs, too. Izzy, our Run the Alps Ambassador of Joy, is always ready and waiting to run the trails.

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To each and everyone of you, we say thank you

As a team, we have a lot to be grateful for. We hope you’ll take a moment to hear from a few key members of our Run the Alps family as we look back on what was one of our best seasons ever, here in the Alps:

From all of us at Run the Alps: Thank you for a fantastic year, and we look forward to sharing our favorite trails with you!