The 22nd annual Mt. Baldhead Challenge will “come home” to downtown Saugatuck’s Wicks Park Saturday, Sept. 10.
The Saugatuck-Douglas Rotary Club’s Saugatuck Public Schools’ Boys and Girls Club fundraiser, aka “The Ultimate Multi-Terrain Race,” will offer 8.2-mile “Challenge” and 12.5-mile “Extreme” courses encompassing scenic wooded trails and 302 steps to spectacular views from the summit of the Mt. Baldhead sand dune.
Both will start at 9 a.m. with a horn blast from aboard the Star of Saugatuck: the Extreme course from Wicks Park and Challenge directly across the Kalamazoo River from 1 Adventure Co. on Park Street. Shuttles available from downtown to the latter. Both will finish with a Wicks Park celebration.
The 2022 22nd Mt. Baldhead Challenge will mostly mark a return its pre-Covid 2019 route. Also, for the first time since 2015, Rotary again invites children ages 5-12 to compete in a free half-mile Fun Run through downtown Saugatuck at 8:30 a.m.
Net proceeds will benefit elementary-school-age students via creating and sustaining Boys & Girls Club summer and after-school enrichment programs.
Race participation peaked in pre-pandemic 2019 with 525 runners. Organizers have capped this year’s entries to 500, filling fast.
Extreme Challenge runners will head out of downtown via Culver and Lake streets, turn right on Blue Star Highway and head to the Beach-to-Bayou trail west on Center Street in Douglas (see map).
Once they reach Lakeshore Drive Lake Michigan vistas, they will proceed north to Campbell Road and east onto Park Street north, connecting with the 8.2-mile route up to the Crow’s Nest Trail at OxBow Art School, then down to the new Fishtown Trail loop near the water tower, then up the Mt. Baldhead steps.
If they have time to catch their breath and snap a photo atop Mt. Baldy, they’ll be ready to run down to Perryman Street and across to the Dunegrass community, through the meadow and woods to Vine Street.
Heading south on Park Street to Tower Marine, athletes enter the home stretch at Blue Star and back into town for the Wicks Park party. The “Mt. Baldhead Bash” will feature music, games and refreshments provided by Saugatuck Brewing Co, including Beermosas and Beery Marys.
“We’re excited to come home to Wicks Park, said race director Ed Karasek. “We work hard each year to make the race the best possible experience for runners, their families, volunteers and residents. It’s a relief now pandemic precautions aren’t dictating how and where we run.”
“We also need more volunteers than our Rotary Club can provide,” he goes on. “Each year, Saugatuck and the race experience get exceptionally high marks from our runners in participant feedback surveys.
“Friendly and helpful volunteers get to cheer the runners on and help out with any problems they might have, plus get a cool t-shirt and have a lot of fun,” Karasek says.
In 2019, Rotary partnered with the Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Holland and Saugatuck Public Schools to introduce supplementary enrichment programs after school and over the summer to students SPS students. Rotary then made a commitment to raise approximately $300,000 to cover the costs of the first three years. The local club has raised about $240,000 of that goal to date.
“We’re confident we can achieve the original goal this year,” says club fundraising chair Jim Sullivan. “We couldn’t do it without the Mt. Baldhead race, volunteers and donors.”
The Saugatuck-Douglas Boys & Girls Club has enrolled more than 200 students since its inception in 2021 and welcomed an average of 50 students per day over the last school year.
The programs help kids to thrive in the areas of academic achievement, physical health and wellbeing, character development, citizenship, and teamwork. Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Holland staff develop relationships with the students and deliver the programs, while SPS hosts the Club at its newly renovated facilities at Douglas Elementary.
Rotary raises and deploys funds needed to offer these services to all families at a nominal $5 annual membership fee per student.
Summer programs this year were available 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. weekdays and welcomed a new partner, the Saugatuck Center for the Arts. Leveraging an $8,000 grant from the Rotary Foundation and the local club, SCA and Boys and Girls Club instructors provided five field trips over six weeks in July and August designed to engage students in hands-on, multi-disciplinary creative challenges.
They visited each of the five “Spaces of Discovery” public art exhibits in Saugatuck, Douglas and Fennville sponsored this summer by the SCA. There, learned about the artists, discussed their work and collaborated on creative games, group creative projects, and individual art-making opportunities.
“Experiencing multiple installations,” said SCA executive director Kristin Armstrong, “enabled the students to make connections about design, location and landscape. The students also saw familiar spaces, like Wades Bayou or Coghlin Park, through a new lens because of the art. The installations prompted new ideas and ways of seeing their communities.”
“Our club,” said local Rotary chapter president Pia Kealey, “is trying to build the foundation of a thriving 21st-century economy by connecting our kids’ education to the health of their local communities.
With our Boys & Girls Club partners, we want to help our schools extend their record of excellence by supporting students to develop the skills they’ll need not only to succeed, but to live fulfilling lives.”
For more information about this year’s Mt. Baldhead Challenge, runners may register online at bit.ly/RUNMBC22 and volunteers at bit.ly/HELPMBC22.