The True Grit Epic starts and finishes at the Cottonwood Cove trailhead in Santa Clara every March, and it's the season opener for the western U.S. mountain-bike endurance calendar. The 100-mile course rolls through Bear Claw Poppy, Stucki Springs, Zen, Suicidal Tendencies, and the Paradise Rim singletrack — every classic Santa Clara reserve trail strung together into a brutally varied loop, ridden twice for the 100 distance. It's been running annually since 2010, and the 100-mile finishers' list reads like a who's-who of long-distance MTB racing.
The Course That Earned the Name
The "Epic" tag isn't marketing — the course mixes hardpack desert singletrack, exposed slickrock, sandy washes, and the brick-and-roller terrain of the Bear Claw Poppy section into a sequence that punishes any single bike setup. The 100-mile riders do two loops; the 50-milers do one; the Sentinel (15 mi) is the local-grade option for riders who want to ride a stage of the full course without committing to a half day in the saddle. Total elevation gain on the 100 pushes 9,000 feet. The finishing time for the men's 100-mile winners typically runs 7:30–8:30; the cutoff is twelve hours.
Why March, Why Santa Clara
The race lives in mid-March because the Virgin River basin has its season window: too cold and snowy in February, too hot by May. The Santa Clara reserve trails — closed to motors, managed by the city, threaded through Bureau of Land Management land — happen to be at their best in March, with hardpack dirt and dry slickrock and full bloom of the endemic claret-cup poppies that give the Bear Claw Poppy trail its name. For riders coming in from out of state, the race is also a reason to ride the rest of the Hurricane / Virgin / Gooseberry network in the surrounding week. Most racers stay multiple days.
The Leadville Connection
The 100-mile distance qualifies finishers for the Leadville Trail 100 MTB lottery — that's the single biggest reason the race draws a national field. Leadville is the most prestigious 100-mile MTB race in the country, and its lottery weights True Grit finishers favorably. So the field includes dedicated Leadville hopefuls every year, plus the local Hurricane / Virgin endurance crowd, plus a steady stream of pro and elite age-group riders who treat True Grit as their season opener. It's the race that puts the western St. George trail network on the national map every spring.