✳️Talking about Trailcon

Observations and themes from Trailcon 2025

Oh hey pals!

What a wild week it’s been with Broken Arrow, Trailcon and WSER all in one. It’s both a content creator’s best and worst nightmare (congrats Singletrack and Freetrail for breaking world records for the number of podcasts released in one week).

I had the fortune to be invited to moderate a panel on the GTWS/WBD news i broke earlier this year, but the misfortune to only be able to take 3 days off the day job. Cue a trip where I spent more time flying than actually being in Tahoe, a panel, several chats with great folk, a short drive to Tahoe City, and a podcast recording with Buzz Burrell. Mental.

Anywho, I couldn’t have done that trip without the support of paid subscribers, so today the post is split in two - everyone can read the observations, and only paid subs can read the themes from the event (and there sure are a lot).

It was so great to meet so many of you in person. Now only 2 months to Chamonix…

Hope you have a wonderful week,

Matt

Observations:

• Olympic Valley was a perfect location – incredible scenery and fantastic facilities. Yes, the manufactured nature of the resort made it feel like a Disneyland for outdoors folk, but that didn’t take away from the experience.
  

• I went into Trailcon thinking most people here will know everything that happens in our small little world. Turns out that’s completely incorrect.
  

  Everyone I spoke to had different levels of awareness of the news in the sport – whether that’s simply the new brands on the scene, race results or the changes to UTMB/GTWS. What this meant is you couldn’t have an in-depth conversation about the industry without having to explain something.
  

  This was most notable when we were discussing questions I’d ask in the GTWS panel I moderated. I went in thinking we’re talking to people in the know, sure this is the US where short-distance trail isn’t as big, but they’ll have a rough knowledge of the deal. As such I wanted to have more questions that discussed the WBD deal and its implications. Nope. Most people I spoke to at the Happy Hour at the Auld Dubliner on Monday night didn’t even know about GTWS. Fortunately, my fellow panellists Anna, Drew, and Rich landed on spending most of our talk giving the context of who GTWS and WBD are and what the deal was; the basics.

  Obviously, that means you, dear reader, are one of the select few who know more than most in the industry through subscribing to Trailmix (you can thank me with a paid subscription 😉). It also shows the need for Trailcon – a place that raises the general knowledge bar for our sport, elevating our conversations beyond descriptions of trends to discussions.

  It also made me rethink what and how I write about topics. I’ve written pieces under the premise you lovely lot want not just the news but the context and analysis. When actually, If I wanted to grow Trailmix, I should focus my writing further up the funnel to simple explainer pieces. The trouble is I would much rather analyse the news than simply tell you it happened. Let me know your thoughts.
  

• There seemed to be two different days at the conference. The first was the intellectual industry discussion day, the second seemed to be the more energetic, lively, light-hearted chat day. I imagine this was on-purpose to test people’s preference of what they want from Trailcon moving forward and to change things up, but maybe a blend would have worked better over the course of both days. Whilst I found the talks interesting on day one, being spoken at multiple times in 30-minute increments by various panels grew tiresome and there was a visible lull in energy in the room by the end of the day. What would be more exciting is varying the formats and locations – for instance smaller ‘fireside chats’, starting talks with a provocation, or getting audience participation.
  

• This is going to make me sound like a grump, but hear me out - It was all very “nice”. There were no challenging questions or prompts, discussions were lighthearted and encouraging, and no feathers were ruffled. Maybe I’m used to industry events where criticism and debate is encouraged, but ultimately this niceness effects the depth of discussion and doesn’t move our industry any further. Maybe it’s related to the awareness issue I mentioned earlier. Maybe it’s simply a Brit at an American event (a few people mentioned to me Americans can be super polite and enthusiastic in person, then say what they really feel behind your back). Maybe it’s the fact that we’re such a close industry where people simply move from one company to the next and you don’t want to appear to be challenging in a room full of your potential future employers/ sponsors / partners. Regardless, I feel there needs to be a space where people can be challenging in a constructive way, but maybe as an industry we’re not there yet?

• Some oddities you really don’t care about but made the trip so much better:

  • Get a large chocolate and peanut butter ice cream from Poppy’s in Tahoe City – it was practically a tub of ice cream on a cone. Blows away the jet lag in no time.

  • The rooms in Palisades Tahoe were unreal. Bigger than my flat and seconds away from the events.

  • Theres such a rich tapestry of birds around the lake and the valley – getting no sleep meant I was treated to a chorus of American Robins, Song Sparrows and Dark-eyed Junco’s (the most unfortunate bird name but epic 90s grunge band name) at 5am both mornings.

    

• Most people I spoke to said this was better than TRE (the running conference in Texas where most brands release their apparel and shoe line-up for the next year). Never been, but there’s a whole lot more opportunity for Trailcon to capitalise on their relevancy to the trail running crowd than TRE could ever muster.

• The event in total was wonderful. I had one of those reaffirming “wasn’t that awesome”/ end-of-movie driving off into the sunset moments when I drove back to the airport. I’m so fortunate to work alongside this industry.

Now to the themes across the talks at day one…