Dragon's Tail Stair Climb Challenge
Saturday, January 16, 2027 · 7:30 AM–2:00 PM
Tech Ridge Staircase, St. George
Three Hundred and Thirty-Three Steps
The Tech Ridge staircase climbs the bluff above St. George in 333 steps, and it is the reason this race exists. In January the city turns it into a competition with a simple premise: go down, come back up, and repeat until you have had enough. The ridged profile of the stairway is where the dragon in the name comes from.
This is the hardest thing on the city's race calendar, and it is hard in an unusual way. There is no pacing problem to solve and no course to learn. It is one flight of stairs and a question about how many times you are willing to climb it.
The Formats
Three ways in, and they are genuinely different events:
- The 5K or 1K run and walk — the accessible option. The 5K starts at the top of the stairs, runs the rim trail, drops down the steep Jerry Rice Trail, climbs Cloud Drive, comes back down Jerry Rice, and finishes with the full 333-step climb. It is a real course in its own right with the staircase saved for the end, which is a cruel piece of design.
- The Sprint Challenge — the staircase against the clock.
- The Endurance Challenge — repeat laps for as long as you can hold them.
Anyone who completes a first lap takes a finisher medal, with charms added at milestones after that. The last lap is a timed showdown that decides the Dragon's Tail King and Queen.
Why January Works
A stair race in St. George in July would be dangerous. In January it is close to ideal: the valley's winter is mild enough to run in a base layer, and the cold that would make a stairway miserable elsewhere is exactly what makes repeated hard climbing sustainable here.
This is the clearest example on the calendar of the region's inversion — the events that would be punishing in a temperate climate work best here in the months when everywhere else has stopped.
Getting There and Watching
Spectating is unusually good here, which makes it a reasonable event to bring children to whether or not they are entered in the 1K.
Who It Suits
Runners who want a genuinely different kind of hard, anybody training for vertical, and — through the 1K and the walk category — people who want to say they climbed it once. Visitors making a winter trip of it will find the county's endurance calendar dense in these months: the Virgin River Half Marathon follows in February and the St. George Triathlon in April. For a gentler look at the same landscape, the trails above town are covered in the best hikes around St. George.
Frequently asked questions
How many stairs is it?
333, on the Tech Ridge staircase above town. The Sprint Challenge times a single ascent; the Endurance Challenge asks how many you can repeat.
Is there an option that is not brutal?
Yes — the 1K run and walk. There is also a 5K, though it is not the easy option: it starts at the top of the stairs, takes in the rim trail, the steep Jerry Rice Trail and Cloud Drive, and finishes by sending you up all 333 steps.
Who can enter the walk categories?
Anyone. The 5K and 1K are both run-or-walk, and completing a first lap earns a finisher medal regardless of how you covered it. The competitive element sits in the Sprint and Endurance challenges rather than across the whole field.
Will the weather be an issue?
In the other direction from what visitors expect. St. George winters are mild enough that a January stair race is comfortable in a base layer, and the staircase is exposed with no shade anywhere on it — which is precisely why this event could not be held here in summer.
Is it worth watching if I am not racing?
Unusually so. Everything happens on one flight of stairs, so a spectator stands in a single spot and sees every competitor come past again and again, rather than glimpsing them once at a mile marker. It is one of the few races where watching is genuinely entertaining.
Where does it start?
At the Tech Ridge staircase, reached from Tech Ridge Parkway above town. The 5K and 1K begin at the top of the stairs rather than the bottom, which is worth knowing when you are working out where to park and how long to allow.