Everything you need to know about the NUT | The Ogden Wire

The Ogden Wire – Episode 2

Recorded September 24, 2025

Shane (Host):
Now we are all right. Welcome out to the second episode of the Ogden wire podcast. It's September 24 heading into the beautiful part of fall here. And who better to tell us what's going on in our mountains and on our trails than trails Foundation, northern Utah. Tiff new as we come, as we refer to you guys a lot, formerly Weber pathways, is that correct? Yep, yep. All right. Why don't you guys introduce yourselves and tell us just a little bit about yourselves, and we'll jump right in.

Kelli Barkema:
Awesome. I'm Kelly barkama. I have been with the foundation going on five years, and I started as marketing and communications, and now do all things Development and Community Relations

Kylie Thompson:
right on. I'm Kylie Thompson. I'm new to the foundation. I've been here since April, and I am the Marketing and Communications Coordinator, and I manage, like, the social media accounts and all the advertising and marketing

Shane:
Right on. Well, we're also joined by Taylor Hartman and Sydney pace from visit Ogden and yeah, we just we'll get into the organization more toward the end. I think in a timely thing, we kind of want to talk about just what's going on out there. I know our fall colors are maybe not as stellar as some years, but they're still stunningly beautiful. How are the trails looking that take all these people up to see those beautiful leaves?

Kelli:
Our trails are amazing, better now than I think they've been in a really long time. We've got an amazing trail crew, Zach and Alyssa, that are out there every day, slaving away to make sure that they're trimmed, make sure that they're safe. We've got a lot of trails in Ogden. So you know, they're spread as far as they can be. But-

Shane:
How many miles? Roughly, we always debate this in our office. How many miles of trails does Weber County actually have?

Kelli:
There's 83 official trails, and so if you figure, most of them are more than three or four miles, but many are even over 10 or 15. I mean, multiply that by 83 I don't even know, but a lot, and that doesn't include any of the trails in the three ski resorts.

Taylor:
Wow. So there's a few. So when it comes to the fall and you know, we have all these trails, we have so many. Are there some that are like must hits to see some of the fall foliage?

Kelli:
Well, yes. And the cool thing is, is, because of the elevation changes, you can start in one place, and a few days later hit another place, and it will progress along with you. So the higher you go, the sooner they'll start changing. And like, like you said, Shane, they're not as bright, maybe this year as they've been in past. But man, the day they change. It sure looks amazing.

Taylor:
Yeah, so we're in late September now paint a timeline on where we're at with the fall colors and the elevation, and what we're seeing is, is it time to go to Snow Basin? Is it time to go to the Bonneville shoreline trail?

Kelli:
Yes, all of the above, the above, I would say just, just on my experience here in the last week, like the the Wasatch Front has has started to turn Yeah, so I think anywhere along the BST, you're gonna start to see that that exciting, you know where it's starting to change. And if you head up to Snow Basin, North Fork, any of those up there, I think you're gonna be full to maybe closer to the end, like past peak. But it also depends on your definition of it.

Shane:
Well, you did mention, you mentioned North Fork Park. Let's just get right to it. We have the northern Utah trail fest coming up October, 3, fourth and fifth. Yes, tell us all about the goodness that's going on up there with that this that weekend.

Kelli:
Oh, my goodness. If you've never been. It's it is an experience. It's three days non stop. We have food vendors, we have music. We get all these different musicians that come and play outside at the park. We have a huge festival that just pops up in the middle of Cutler flats campground. We also in the middle of all of that, throw together some sporting events. We've got a timed mountain bike race that takes place on one side of the park, and you can do a three hour a six hour solo or a six hour duo race. We also have a foot race that goes on in another side of the park that you can do a three hour foot race, a six hour solo foot race, a six hour duo foot race and a nine hour timed foot race on Saturday. Wow. It's something for everybody, and it just is unbelievably fun.

Taylor:
So what? What type of people do you typically? You know, those races, some of those are pretty long that I feel like there's a specific probably requirement for both passion and physical ability. Do you have, like, a certain type of person that you see that does this? Is it? Is it mostly trail runners, or who's coming up and enjoying these races?

Kelli:
Everybody? Taylor. Sure. I mean, we've, we've got, we've got high school kids that come up because it's a timed race, so you're really only competing with yourself. It's not like Kylie and I are running together and I've got to beat her. You're just doing it to see. How many loops can you do in that three hours. We do have some of the ultra runners that love to push themselves further and further, and they're the ones that get out there and do that nine hour but it's a great introduction to, I think, just about anybody. In fact, there's not even a requirement that you have to run. You can go and hike it. I mean, it's all up to you.

Shane:
Tell us a little about just timeline wise. So it starts Friday. What time when are people going to roll in there? What can they expect to see and what's going on Friday night? Then walk us through the entire weekend. Sure, when do things happen? Saturday? What's happening Sunday?

Kelli:
Yeah, I can talk about a Friday, and Kylie can take Saturday. On Friday, we start our camping. It's gonna open at 4pm people can start coming in to find their campsites.

Shane:
And they had to make those reservations already.

Kelli:
You do. And we sell out of camping every year. So full of if you want to get one, check and see if we've still got some, where do we check to find www.northernutattrailfest.com?

Shane:
Okay, so for next year, if you want to jump in on the camping scene, that's where you check. Otherwise, assuming you have your reservation, you show up Friday and start to set up your camp. Take me from there.

Kelli:
Okay, so from there we're going to have a packet pickup for any of those runners that are going runners or bikers that are racing the next day. We also have our vendor setup, musician setup, beginning at five o'clock on Friday night. That's when the festivities begin. We're going to have a few pre event warm ups. We've got a nutty night ride that takes place that night. We've got a fun run, a warm up run. We also, this year introducing an adaptive component to the race, and so they'll get their information and stuff on Friday night as well, and we'll just open up the festival, start partying, start shopping, and then we go to sleep that night and wake up bright and early on Saturday morning.

Shane:
So the adaptive raise kind of piqued my interest. Are you working? Are you guys working with Ogden Valley adaptive on that? Great and so if people want to find out more about jumping in on that, or either this year or next year, I assume, check out Ogden Valley adaptive.

Kelli:
They can, they can do that. Or it's also on the net website as well, and it's brand new this year, so it's a cheaper fee. We just want to get everybody up there. This event is for all trail users.

Taylor:
That's awesome, really opening it up to as many people as possible on those trails. Well, tell tell us about Saturday,

Kylie:
so you can register for the race up until Saturday or Friday night for the nine hour. And the nine hour starts first, and that one starts at 6am and that's the run only. And then, like, there's like the pre race meeting for, like the three in the six hour trail and bike race. And then the Kid Zone opens at 11am and that's like the free area where all the kids can hang out. And there's like hula hoops, giant bubbles, cornhole drum circle, and like STEM activities with a climbing wall. And then the food trucks open in the festival as well, so the vendors and everything opens, and some of our food trucks we're gonna see up there. We've got los churros.

Kelli:
We have bad humor is coming up. We've got daily rise as always that will be there with us. We've got Nacho, average nachos. We have rain, freeze, snowy. I mean, got a little bit of everything for you.

Shane:
So clearly, this is not just athlete focused. Sounds like there's a lot of stuff for lazy guys like me to hang around. This is getting better all the time. Lots of vendor booths, right? Shopping to do? Lots of vendor booths, yeah. So like retail vendors, and then I assume some community advocacy stuff, like I usually see the backcountry horsemen up there.

Kelli:
Yep. And in fact, they're going to be hosting a backcountry horseman ride for some of their equestrians on Saturday. It is closed just to members of backcountry horsemen this year, but that's another component we're looking to add permanently.

Shane:
So it's truly all trail users, runners, cyclists, hikers, equestrians,

Kelli:
everything. We even go farther and say, any outdoor enthusiasts.

Shane:
So Saturday, where we got to food trucks, we got to lunch time. Continue me on Saturday,

Kylie:
then so event van sessions always comes, and they are going to be there from 11 to three, and they're going to have live music and athlete interviews during the trail fest, and then the creativity cambana is also a free thing for kids that it is going to have like tie dye marbling and face painting and Princess parties, journal making wow and all sorts of like activities and creative. Stuff for the kids,

Taylor:
good, creative things to keep the kids occupied while the adults are running for hours.

Shane:
Now, I've seen some seminars that have gone on. I've seen stuff by botanist talking about wildflower gardens. I've seen what can we expect seminar wise and live music wise, if they're off that main stage.

Kelli:
So this year we've got some of our favorites are, like stargazing. We've got somebody from Ogden Nature Center coming that's going to host some guided stargazing on both Friday and Saturday night, because North Fork is one of our designated dark sky parks. We've got talons to tails, which is a seminar. We've got forest bathing this year you can register for we have a first aid wilderness hike sponsored by Weber State University Outdoor Program. Oh my goodness, we've got, there's so many, and you can find all of those A La Carte kind of activities on the website. We do ask that you pre register for those, but they are still free. We just want to kind of tap a few of them and see. And if you get up to the event and you're like, I really want to do this event, but you're not sure if it's full or not, we will have a activity station, or, like, a check in area where you can come and say, Hey, are there spots available for this? And we'll hook you up.

Taylor:
That's great with so many such a number of different things to do. To be able to go up there and check and for those of us, like me, who may not have planned ahead, you can go up and still have fun and enjoy yourselves. Sponsors and partners, you, I'm sure, are working with different organizations as part of this. Is there anyone you'd like to shout out or mention, yes.

Kelli:
So we have some amazing sponsors, and with this kind of from the very beginning, have been arcteryx, Solomon, Ogden outdoor. They have title or excuse me, they have sponsored our run from the beginning, so for the past three years, then we also have Intermountain Health. They've been another amazing partner with us for the past, I think, all three seasons. So those are our title sponsors, and then we just have an amazing array of community people who have backed us this year last year. Some of them have been with us the whole time. Others are new to the festivities, and so we've got a whole list of those as well on give us the list. Oh, it's on the website. Well, yep, we can find it here too. We absolutely can. We love our sponsors. They are amazing. We couldn't do it without them.

Kylie:
We have, like, our different tier of sponsors too. We have the mountain goat sponsors, Nanny go and then billy goat sponsors,

Unknown:
yes, make sense? Up there, right below the mountain, right there.

Kelli:
Well, and I don't know if we mentioned it, but in addition to like the goats, the northern Utah trial fest seems really, you know, starchy. We like to call it the nut nut. Just, just the nut. We like to throw that acronym in for everything. But yeah, some of our other amazing sponsors are envy. We've got fleet feet, ABC, Admiral beverage company and Pepsi. Big shout out to CPC, new tech. We've got Kiev, new to nutrition, the van sessions. Also a big shout out to ramp. They've been great supporters of this event. From the beginning of foam are Ogden, friends of acoustic music, the Utah humanities group. We've got life elevated, which I believe is Utah, like Utah, our children's Earth, they've been great to partner with our creativity. Cabana, they come and host a lot of those activities for us. Weber, county big supporter, Ogden, Nature Center, pit viper, the bike shop. Weber, state Outdoor Program, integrated tax and visit Ogden. And then even today, we brought on one more, which was Wadman corporation. So thank you to all of you.

Taylor:
Well, that's a good group of sponsors. That's for sure. Community pillars, for sure, absolutely. Well, is there anything else you want to

Shane:
add about say someone, if your earliest race is the nine hour, it starts at 6am that means they're wrapping at 3pm Yep, and you guys still go after that, it's a big party from then on, now, it's just purely festival live music and just in camping and enjoying and hanging out with fellow trail loving hippies, right?

Kelli:
S'mores. We have fire pits that we got out. We're still watching the fire restrictions, but we've got some backup plans for that. But we host free smore making at night. Party goes on until we ask for quiet time at 10. Well, we're

Shane:
looking forward to being up there. I know I will be up there Saturday, and I think I'm spending the night into Sunday. I'm not positive, yes, but yeah, yeah. Well, thank you guys for joining us and man, well, we'll put all the links down below to your website, to goals website, to your spa. Sponsors all that good stuff, but thanks for joining us here today and walking us through the nut

Kelli & Kylie:
thanks for having us. Thanks. You.