Just enough snow covered the ground to whip against our legs in a fury of white. “Laramie is a harsh place to live in January,” said Katie Hogarty, the race’s newest director. It occasionally draws elite athletes, ones known for taking top finishes in some of the West’s most grueling mountain races, but it also brings out the rest of us. And it’s a delightful one, completed for no other reason than the perverse joy of being out there together and about as far removed from typical mountain running events as a race can get. A bottle of Tincup Whiskey sits underneath a pine tree on Pole Mountain outside Laramie as the lone nourishment in the Twin Mountain Trudge.