The 9th annual Westmore Mountain Challenge is in the books! (Earlier posts said 8th – oops! We’ve been having so much fun all these years we lost count!)

Congratulations to all of our participants – you did it! Whether you hiked 3 mountains or 5, it is quite a feat and an amazing job well done on a beautiful day. Thank you for joining us and supporting NorthWoods and all that we do!

Check out the overall 2025 Westmore Mountain Challenge Timing Results (thanks IronWoods Adventure Works!) for Marathon and 20-mile length. (We will be updating this spreadsheet later this week to separate out by age and gender categories.)

Once again we are proud to see a number of NorthWoods staff participating this year— including our fastest finisher Sam Galati! Sam is a Pro Crew member this season and has been working on state and national forestlands all over the northeast building and maintaining trails. He traveled from the crew’s most recent project site at the Moosehorn National Wildlife Refuge in northeastern Maine, almost 6 hours away, to participate in the Challenge on Saturday and sailed in with a 2025 top time of 4 hours and 17 minutes. Congratulations Sam!

One of the unique things about this hike is that because folks all start at different times in the morning, it is often the case that the first folks to the finish are not necessarily the fastest, and so sometimes records slip right by us in the moment! That was the case this year when Alayne Tetor quietly came in at 4 hours and 55 minutes—setting the fastest women’s record for the Challenge to date! Amazing job Alayne!

A special appreciation goes out to our signature sponsors for funding this community event and our work as a whole- your support helps keep this event going: Passumpsic Bank, SapJack, Community National Bank, Better Real Estate and Century 21 Farm & Forest. Our partners at VT Forests Parks & Recreation, the Westmore Association, and the Green Mountain Club: NEK Section, are frequent and deeply valued partners in many areas of our work, including the Challenge, which we couldn’t pull off without them! Thank you also to the Glover Ambulance Squad for standing by to respond to hikers in need!
Finally thank you to Jasper Hill Farm and The Genny, and Eden Ciders for making yesterday especially delicious and to the fantastic folks at Fox Market & Bar for responding to our SOS and delivering such amazing food without fuss and on short notice!

This event is a huge community effort, and we are grateful to everyone who helps make it possible. Thank you to the Thank you to our staff, and many many amazing volunteers for pulling off our largest WMC event ever!

Want to share your hike? Tag us on social media with #westmoremountainchallenge, or @northwoodsvt (Instagram) and @northwoodscenter (FB).