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⏵ Course guide · Utah ultra

Moab 240 Endurance Run Course Guide

The Moab 240 is a roughly 242 mile single loop out of Moab through some of the wildest country in Utah: desert, slickrock, deep canyons, mesas, and two whole mountain ranges, with the Canyonlands and Arches backdrop the entire way. You get desert heat by day, cold high-country nights, days of sleep deprivation, and a 112 hour clock. I will walk you through the loop first, then give you pacing, sleep, crew, and fueling strategy built for a multi-day 240, plus free tools to dial in your own numbers.

⏵ Quick facts

Moab 240 at a glance

Date
Fri, October 9, 2026 (multi-day, finishes by Oct 14)
Location
Moab, Utah, canyon country near Canyonlands and Arches
Start / Finish
Single loop, starts and finishes in Moab
Distance
About 241.8 miles (one continuous loop)
Elevation gain
Roughly 31,892 ft of climb, with about the same descent
Start
6:00 AM Friday
Aid
15 full aid stations, 5 of them sleep stations
Cutoff
112 hours overall
Qualifier
Western States Endurance Run qualifier

Note: the exact route, distance, vert, aid stations, crew points, and cutoffs shift from year to year (past editions have listed slightly different mileage and time limits). So before you plan your race, confirm the current date, route, and rules on the official Destination Trail site.

The course

The Moab 240 is one continuous loop, starting and finishing in Moab, about 241.8 miles with roughly 31,892 feet of climbing and about the same descent. It strings together the whole range of Utah canyon country: low desert basins, miles of red slickrock, deep canyons and mesa rim, and then two separate mountain ranges where the course climbs up into pine forest and back down again. The vert is not in one giant climb. It is spread across days, and so is the descent.

The desert and the slickrock: exposure and footing

Big chunks of this loop run through open desert and slickrock with almost no shade. That means long, sun-exposed, dry stretches where the heat and the lack of cover do real damage if you are careless with water and your core temperature. The footing alone is a whole skill: soft sand that saps your legs, hardpack, and sharp red slickrock that is fast when you can read it and ankle-rolling when you cannot.

This is where a steady, patient early pace pays off the most. It is easy to feel great on fresh legs in the cool morning and push the runnable desert, but you have days ahead. Protect your feet from the sand and grit from the very first miles, because foot problems on a 240 do not heal, they just compound.

The mountains: two ranges, real climbing and real cold

The loop does not stay in the desert. It climbs up into two separate mountain ranges, trading slickrock and sand for forested singletrack, rockier climbs, and much higher ground. This is where the bigger sustained climbing lives, and where the temperature flips on you. You can roast in the desert by day and then be genuinely cold up in the trees at night, and on an October date the high sections can see snow.

Pace the mountain climbs by effort, not by your desert splits, and hike the steep stuff efficiently. Just as important, have your warm layers staged in drop bags so you hit the high cold country with a jacket, gloves, and a hat instead of shivering through the night and wrecking your morale.

Aid, sleep stations, and the night

The course has 15 full aid stations, and 5 of them are set up as sleep stations with cots and shelter so you can lie down out of the wind and the cold. Crew can reach you at a limited set of points along the loop, roughly every 50 miles or so where vehicles can get in, and the gaps between aid in the remote desert can be long, so carry enough water and food to cover them rather than counting on the next station being close.

The nights are the real test of a 240. Multiple nights out there means sleep deprivation stacks up, your pace slows in the dark, and your decision-making gets foggy. The runners who do well treat the sleep stations as part of the plan, take short deliberate rest blocks, deal with their feet, eat real food, and get moving again, instead of grinding straight through until they fall apart.

Pacing strategy for the Moab 240

A multi-day 240 through desert and mountains rewards patience, foot durability, and sleep discipline far more than raw speed. Pace this one by effort across days, and treat the long downhills and the nights as the real test.

Run the first day like it does not count

The single biggest mistake on a race this long is pushing the early miles because the desert feels runnable and your legs are fresh. You have days to go. The smart move is to run the first day so easy it almost feels lazy, keep your effort low on the climbs, and hike the steep stuff early instead of forcing it. Every match you burn in the first 24 hours costs you double on day three.

Use our free grade-adjusted pace calculator to turn your flat fitness into honest effort targets for the climbs and descents, so you are running the early grades sustainably instead of cashing in legs and feet you are going to want at mile 180.

Build a vert-aware finish plan against the 112 hour clock

Do not guess your Moab 240 time off a 100 miler. The extra distance, the ~31,900 feet of climbing, the desert footing, the heat, and the sleep stops all stack on real hours, and time at the sleep stations is part of your total whether you like it or not. Build a realistic finish window that accounts for the climbing and then work it backward into the 112 hour cutoff and the intermediate cutoffs, so you always know how much buffer you actually have, not how much you hope you have.

Our vert-aware race time calculator gives you a finish estimate that respects this course’s climbing, which is a far better starting point than a flat-road guess for planning your sleep and your crew timing.

Reality-check the goal before you commit

Before you build a whole plan around a number, sanity-check it. If you want to know how a recent race or a 100 mile finish lines up against a 240 mile effort like this, our race equivalent calculator helps you turn that result into an honest Moab goal instead of a fantasy one. Then you can set sleep, crew, and pacing decisions around a time you can actually hold across multiple days and nights.

⏵ Free tools to pace this course

  • Grade-adjusted pace calculator to turn your flat fitness into honest effort targets for the desert, the climbs, and the long descents.
  • Race-time calculator for a vert-aware finish estimate on this course’s climbing, so you can plan sleep and crew against the 112 hour cutoff.
  • Race-equivalent calculator to turn a recent race or 100 mile result into a Moab 240 goal you can actually hold across days.

Fueling strategy for a multi-day 240

Over days in the desert and the mountains, fueling and hydration matter as much as fitness, and the thing that breaks most runners is not running out of fuel but losing the ability to take it in. Build the plan around a gut that goes south.

Carbs: steady while moving, real food to keep eating

While you are moving, aim for roughly 60 to 90 grams of carbohydrate per hour from a mix of gels, drink mix, and real food, leaning on whatever still goes down easily that far into the race. The catch on a 240 is that after a day or two your appetite and your stomach turn on you, and the sweet stuff stops working. That is when savory, varied, real food at the aid and sleep stations carries you: broth, potatoes, quesadillas, whatever you can stomach, plus salt.

Practice eating when you feel awful, not just when you feel good, on long back-to-back training runs. Being able to keep calories going in at hour 60 when nothing sounds appetizing is honestly what separates finishers from DNFs out here.

Sodium and fluid: built for the dry desert and the gaps

The dry desert pulls a lot of fluid and sodium out of you, often without you noticing because the sweat evaporates fast, so bias your sodium toward the higher end, commonly around 500 to 700 milligrams per liter of fluid and more if you are a salty sweater. Just as important, carry enough fluid to cover the long, exposed stretches between aid instead of rationing to the next station and showing up wrung out. Cramping, a sloshy stomach, and that hollow late-race feeling are usually fluid and sodium problems, not fitness problems.

Weigh yourself before and after a hot, dry long run to find your real sweat rate, then build the plan around your own number rather than a generic one.

⏵ Build your fueling plan

Get a carb, sodium, fluid, and caffeine plan per hour built for your weight, your goal time, and the Moab desert and altitude with the free ultra fueling calculator. Browse the rest of the free running tools at the tools hub.

⏵ Train for it with Summit Line

Get a race-day plan built around YOUR fitness, this exact Moab 240 course profile, and your projected splits. Summit Line reads your real training, builds a plan for the desert and the mountain climbing, and rehearses your fueling and sleep so a multi-day 240 is something you execute, not guess at.

Start free →Explore the demo

Moab 240 FAQ

How hard is the Moab 240 Endurance Run?

It is one of the hardest things you can sign up for, but the difficulty is not where beginners expect it. The Moab 240 is a roughly 241.8 mile single loop out of Moab with around 31,892 feet of climbing through desert, slickrock, canyons, mesas, and two mountain ranges, and the killer is not any one climb. It is the time and the terrain. You are out there for days and nights, swinging between baking exposed desert and cold high-country forest, on footing that ranges from soft sand to sharp slickrock, all while sleep deprivation stacks up. The cutoff is 112 hours, so a runner who actually trains for it can finish, but you have to plan sleep, crew, drop bags, and pacing, not just show up fit. It anchors Destination Trail’s Triple Crown of 200s, and Courtney Dauwalter winning it outright in 2017 is a big part of why people know the name.

How much climbing is in the Moab 240?

The official course has roughly 31,892 feet of cumulative climbing across about 241.8 miles, with a matching amount of descent since it is one big loop back to the start. There is no single monster climb to point at. The course just keeps stacking gain and loss as it crosses the desert basins and then climbs up into two separate mountain ranges and back down, so the vert piles up on you over days rather than in one hit. And because the descent equals the climb, the long downhills are what quietly wreck your quads and your feet over that much time. So train the downhills and the long time on feet, not just the uphill grind. Note that past editions have listed slightly different distance and gain numbers as the route shifts, so confirm the current figures with the race.

How should I fuel for the Moab 240?

You are fueling for days, not hours, so the plan has to survive a gut that gets fussy. While you are moving, most runners aim for roughly 60 to 90 grams of carbohydrate per hour from a mix of real food and sports nutrition, and sodium needs climb in the dry desert heat. The real problem on a 240 is appetite: after a day or two the sweet gels stop going down, so savory, varied, real food at the aid and sleep stations is what keeps calories coming in. Plan to actually eat at the sleep stations, carry enough for the longer gaps between aid in the exposed desert sections, and practice eating when you are tired and feel terrible. Our free ultra fueling calculator gives you a starting carb, sodium, and fluid target per hour to build the plan around.

What is the Moab 240 cutoff and sleep strategy?

The overall time limit is 112 hours, and the course has 15 full aid stations with 5 of them set up as sleep stations with cots and shelter so you can rest out of the elements. Because the clock runs across days, this is as much a sleep race as a running race. The people who finish well almost always plan sleep on purpose, usually short blocks at the sleep stations, instead of pushing straight through and then unraveling. Build your plan backward from the 112 hours and leave honest room for sleep, aid time, foot care, and the slow night sections that are coming whether you like it or not. Confirm the current intermediate cutoffs and sleep-station rules with the official race before you lock anything in.

What is the weather and terrain like at the Moab 240?

Expect big swings, because the course crosses both desert and mountains. The low desert and slickrock sections can get hot and intensely sun-exposed in the day, with little shade and long dry stretches, then the high country in two mountain ranges can get genuinely cold at night, and an October date can mean anything from warm afternoons to snow up high. The footing is just as varied: soft sand, hardpack, sharp red slickrock, rocky climbs, and forest trail. So pack layers for the cold nights, plan your water for the exposed desert gaps, and protect your feet from the sand and rock from the very start. Treat the temperature swing and the surface changes as part of the race, not a surprise.

Do you need crew and pacers for the Moab 240?

You do not strictly need them, but most runners use them. The aid stations are well stocked and the race is designed so a solo runner can get through, but a 240 mile effort goes a lot smoother with a crew handling drop bags, food, foot care, and decisions when your own brain is fried at 3 a.m. Crew access is limited to certain points along the loop, roughly every 50 miles or so at the spots vehicles can reach, and pacers are allowed but restricted early on to keep the front of the race self-reliant before they can join you later. Read the current runner’s manual for the exact crew points and the mile where pacers are allowed, since those rules can change year to year.

This guide is for planning and training, and it reflects publicly available information about the Moab 240 Endurance Run. Race details, including the date, exact route, distance, elevation, aid stations, crew and pacer rules, sleep stations, and cutoffs, can change year to year. So always confirm the current specifics on the official Destination Trail race website before you train or travel. The fueling and pacing advice is general and not medical advice.