Climbing
La Sportiva athlete Jane Maus has etched her name into the history of one of the most coveted mountain records in the world. On August 22, she ran from the valley floor to the 13,775-foot summit of Wyoming’s Grand Teton and back in 3 hours and 45 minutes, setting the women’s unsupported Fastest Known Time (FKT).
The Grand is no ordinary run. The route climbs over 7,000 vertical feet and blends runnable switchbacks with scree, boulder fields, and technical fourth- and fifth-class terrain. The no-fall zones and tricky route-finding make it as much a climbing challenge as a running one. Maus’s time eclipsed Jazmine Lowther’s 4:06 effort set just three days earlier, as well as Jen Day Denton’s 2022 mark of 4:15. To put it in perspective, mountain legends Kilian Jornet and Emelie Forsberg ran a team time of 3:51 back in 2012.
“I have been climbing on and off for the past 10 years,” Maus wrote in an email to SnowBrains. “It’s always been my go-to sport when a running injury pops up, but I’ve never really been super drawn to classic rock climbing. I do really love fourth and low fifth class scrambling, and growing up in Salt Lake, I would scramble on the ridges in the Wasatch and found that I could move really efficiently on this terrain, and I absolutely loved it. I moved to Boulder, Colorado, last year and have gotten really into scrambling the flatirons. I still rock climb and go on climbing trips with friends, but my bread and butter is really combining trail runs with more technical, scrambling terrain.”
For Maus, the accomplishment was about far more than the clock. “I came out to Wyoming this summer with the intention of running as fast as I could up and down the Grand Teton,” she shared in an Instagram post. “But having never been on this mountain before, I thought it would be naive to say I was going for the women’s FKT. I just wanted to give the Grand the respect it deserves.”
She quickly learned the mountain on repeat summits, finding both confidence and doubt with each lap. When Lowther’s record raised the bar on August 19, Maus admits she briefly questioned whether her goal was realistic. But weather windows don’t wait, and neither did she. “On Friday, August 22, I achieved what I thought was impossible and ran up and down the Grand Teton in 3 hours and 45 minutes,” she wrote.
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This summer caps a breakthrough season for Maus, who also secured a spot on the U.S. World Mountain Running Team at the competitive Broken Arrow 46K in June. Her background in rock climbing and scrambling proved critical in moving efficiently through the Grand’s exposed sections.
Despite her achievement, Maus remains both humble and hopeful. “I am confident the strong women in this sport will bring this time way down,” she said. “I’m just so excited that I get to be part of the story of the Grand Teton. I truly feel so, so lucky right now.”
Maus’s run is the latest chapter in the evolving story of the Grand Teton, a mountain that continues to inspire, humble, and challenge those who set foot on it. Records will keep falling, and stronger athletes may push the bar even higher, but Maus’s effort is a reminder that breakthroughs often come from persistence, respect for the terrain, and the courage to test personal limits.
