Published June 18, 2026 09:05AM<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Catalan ultrarunner Kilian Jornet was jogging up the slopes of 14,021-foot Wilson Peak in Colorado\u2019s San Juan Range this past September when he saw an abandoned mining cart sitting against the rocks. Jornet, who was ascending all of the peaks above 14,000 feet in the contiguous United States for a project called States of Elevation, was startled at the discovery.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s abandoned, it\u2019s not active anymore, but still it\u2019s very shocking,\u201d Jornet, 38, told Outside<\/em>. \u201cIt makes you reflect on all the extraction that has been there.\u201d<\/p>\n Jornet took a personal lesson from the ore cart: when industrialization comes to the wild backcountry, the impact will last for decades or centuries.<\/p>\n This year, Jornet is dedicating his ultramarathon racing to a campaign born of this realization. He is promoting the protection of U.S. public lands through branding, online messaging, and interviews. When he lines up for California\u2019s Western States 100 Endurance Run on June 27, he will race wearing a hat emblazoned with the slogan \u201cKeep Public Lands in Public Hands.\u201d<\/p>\n Jornet posted a letter to his website on June 18 detailing his thoughts on the state of U.S. public lands. \u201cIf States of Elevation taught me anything, it\u2019s that the privilege of access comes with a non-negotiable cost: responsibility,\u201d Jornet wrote. \u201cIt means advocating for the wild spaces that cannot speak for themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n During his States of Elevation project, Jornet summited 67 different peaks and traveled between them by running or biking.<\/p>\n He told Outside<\/em> that during the project, the legacy of mining in the San Juan mountains was impossible to ignore. Old mine sites appear in the otherwise beautiful alpine landscape as weathered industrial ruins: gray wooden buildings, collapsed ore bins, rusted machinery, tailings piles, and gaping mine portals cut into steep slopes.<\/p>\n \u201cYou can see that it\u2019s polluted,\u201d Jornet said. \u201cIn a place that\u2019s otherwise very clean, you can see the rubbish, and the pollution in the colors of the waters and in the rocks.\u201d<\/p>\n Jornet\u2019s push comes as the federal government has rolled back environmental protections across millions of acres of public lands. In May, the Bureau of Land Management rescinded the Conservation and Landscape Health Rule, also called the Public Lands Rule, which placed conservation on equal footing with mining, grazing, and drilling across 245 million acres of public land. Also in May, the Trump Administration inked an executive order that opened millions of acres of protected public lands to dirt bikes, trucks, and all-terrain vehicles. Amid the current U.S. government\u2019s push for \u201cenergy dominance,\u201d Jornet is concerned that public lands face growing pressure from development, including mining and oil and gas exploration. And once industrial development starts, there\u2019s no going back, he said.<\/p>\n \u201cSeeing so many exploited areas, now barren without animal or plant life, I saw the way the ecosystem was compromised,\u201d he said. \u201cIt will never be the same. It can become a different ecosystem, but it can never go back to what it was.\u201d<\/p>\n In Western Europe, where Jornet was born and raised, large tracts of undisturbed nature like those that still exist in the U.S. West are rare. \u201cThere are villages and roads everywhere,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s not possible to run for 50 miles without finding human things.\u201d<\/p>\n Because so little open land remains, Jornet said citizens tend to be aligned in the belief that it should be protected. In the Alps, for example, after decades of ski resort expansion, many people now oppose further corporate infrastructure projects and are willing to stand up against them.<\/p>\n In the U.S., he said, the abundance of open public land can create the opposite response: complacency. People can take it for granted, at least until the road goes in and other signs of development begin to appear. And then it\u2019s too late.<\/p>\n Jornet pointed to the Trump administration\u2019s proposal last summer to rescind the \u201cRoadless Rule\u201d as a direct threat to undeveloped backcountry. The 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule, a U.S. Forest Service policy adopted at the end of the Clinton administration, generally protects large undeveloped areas of national forests from being cut up by new roads.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople say, \u2018Oh, it\u2019s just a road, it\u2019s not like we\u2019re selling off a national park,\u2019\u201d Jornet said. \u201cBut that\u2019s how truly wild places are lost, not all at once, but road by road, lease by lease.\u201d<\/p>\n In Norway, where Jornet has lived for the past decade, he\u2019s used to a different relationship with the land. The \u201cright to roam,\u201d known there as allemannsretten, gives people broad freedom to walk, ski, swim, paddle, forage, and camp on uncultivated land, even when it is privately owned, as long as they do so responsibly (i.e.,\u00a0leave no trace, respect wildlife and livestock, keep clear of homes, farms, and cultivated fields).<\/p>\n This right is legally protected under Norway\u2019s Outdoor Recreation Act. Sweden and Finland have similar access rights, as do some other parts of Europe, including Scotland.<\/p>\n \u201cIt means that even on private property, you can\u2019t own nature,\u201d Jornet said.<\/p>\n In Jornet\u2019s view, that shared access also helps protect the land from being treated as a resource controlled by any one person or entity. If the land is degraded or overused, the system fails for everyone.<\/p>\n <\/p>\nViewing U.S. Public Lands From a European Perspective<\/h2>\n
Norway\u2019s Right to Roam Rules<\/h2>\n