Money has finally shown up to the FKT scene.
A small outfit out of New Hampshire, whitemountainski.co, has launched what it’s calling the White Mountain Bounty. The setup is straightforward: a $10,000 annual prize pool that pays trail runners to break records on five of the hardest, most-loved routes in the region. The top prizes are $2,000. Once a record falls, the bounty for that route resets to $500. And records that go unclaimed see their value grow each year.
That last part is the hook. The site says it plainly: “the value of certain routes will increase the older the FKT is.”
In other words, the longer Jack Kuenzle’s Presidential Traverse time holds, the more it pays out.
The routes, the records, the money
Five routes are in play.
The Presidential Traverse pays $2,000. Kuenzle holds the men’s mark at 3:31:54, set in September 2023. Lindsay Webster owns the women’s at 4:33:39 from 2021.
The White Mountains Hut Traverse, also $2,000, belongs to Kuenzle (9:58:03 self-supported, 2021) and Katie Schide (12:23:06 self-supported, 2019).
The Pemigewasset Loop, $1,000, has Jake Acito on top at 5:32:34 unsupported (2022) and Britta Clark at 6:31:49 unsupported (2020).
The Mahoosuc Traverse, also $1,000, was reset last August by Jeffrey Colt at 6:40:53 unsupported. Hillary Gerardi holds the women’s at 7:16:00.
Then there’s the White Mountains 100, the longest of the bunch, which pays $2,000 supported or $1,000 unsupported. Kuenzle’s 26:09:25 supported has stood since 2022. The other three categories on this route all changed hands in the last year: Austin Black at 34:49:36 men’s unsupported, Cara Baskin at 34:12:58 women’s supported, and Whitney Pearson at 53:10:40 women’s unsupported.
The bounty funds depth, too. On any of the five routes, second place pays $200, third $150, fourth $100, and fifth through tenth $50 each. The organizers say they’re still building the all-time top-ten leaderboards.
How a claim works
GPS files are required. Strava or Garmin uploads, and the line has to match the route as drawn on fastestknowntime.com. Attempts have to be announced in advance. The support classification matters; as the rules state, “unsupported means only water from huts/established sources.”
Winter runs don’t count. The $10,000 ceiling is firm. Cash goes to whoever holds the FKT on the route at the end of the calendar year. Submissions and questions go to andrew@whitemountainski.co, per the bounty page.
If you’re coming in from out of state, the organizers are pitching themselves as a soft landing. “For those visiting from afar, please reach out for help with accommodations and transportation,” the site reads.
Why this is unusual
The FKT scene has, for a long time, run on something close to honor code. A runner picks a route. They post their effort. Someone takes a shot at it later. Nobody collects a check. The reward is your name on the page, a clean GPS file, and whatever satisfaction comes with knowing you held a number for a while.
Cash changes that equation.
A $2,000 bounty over the Presidential Traverse is a real reason to keep going on a ridge that doesn’t forgive a bad call. The Presi above treeline collects lightning, whiteouts, and 80 mph wind, sometimes on the same afternoon. Hikers die up there in summer. Adding a financial pull to send it anyway is the kind of thing safety folks tend to write letters about. Mountain running at speed already asks a lot of judgment; a paycheck on the other side of the finish does not make those calls easier.
There’s a second wrinkle. If $10,000 a year works, $50,000 works better. Brands are paying attention to FKTs in a way they weren’t five years ago, and the gap between “FKT” and “race without a start line” narrows when a calendar full of bounties starts driving when and how runners show up.
The organizers are honest about their goal. They say they want “to reward those trailrunners who continue to raise the ceiling of what’s possible in our terrain.” That’s a fine sentence on paper. The harder question is what gets risked to push that ceiling, and whether the people taking those risks would have gone anyway.
For now, five routes, five records, and $10,000 sitting in an envelope somewhere in New Hampshire. The first claim of the summer will tell us a lot.
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