On a Sunday morning in mid-September, Park City's City Park fills with a sight that would baffle any first-time visitor: hundreds of mountain bikers in superhero capes, tutus, and full-body foam costumes, straddling bikes festooned with decorations of every kind. At ten o'clock sharp they surge up Main Street, a laughing, hollering, costumed river of humanity pointed straight at the sky. This is the Tour des Suds, the mountain town's most beloved and least serious athletic tradition, and on September 13, 2026, it returns for its 41st edition.
The event is a seven-mile, roughly 2,200-foot climb that begins at City Park and ends at Empire Pass, with a party station at the top of Empire Pass. It is, by any honest measure, a brutal physical test — a sustained uphill grind that would be a legitimate race in its own right. Indeed, there are awards, and some riders treat it as a serious competition. But the soul of the Tour des Suds has always been the costume. "Crazy costumes, crazy bikes" is the stated concept, and the Mountain Trails Foundation, the nonprofit that hosts the event, encourages riders to "don 'festive' costumes and celebrate the beginning of the fall mountain bike season in a spirited manner."
The event's origin story is as delightfully unpretentious as the race itself. The name Tour des Suds began as a joke, the original purpose being to spoof the serious nature of big-time racing. A handful of Park City locals celebrated the end of summer by filling their water bottles with beer, dressing in costumes, and racing to the top of Empire Pass, where a keg of beer awaited the finishers. In those early days, the summit party was the whole point. Over the decades the keg moved down the mountain, and the celebration now unfolds back at City Park, but the spirit has never changed. It has always been simply a day to have a good time — which is why the 2026 edition is only the 41st.
Sturgis is a figure of outsized importance in Park City's outdoor story. A Chicago native who came to Utah to ski in 1973 and never left, he moved to Park City in 1985 to take over White Pine Touring, a small cross-country skiing outfit, and began selling the newfangled mountain bikes. The problem, he quickly discovered, was that there were virtually no legal trails to ride them on. So he started building them, organizing Thursday night and Sunday group rides that doubled as trail-building crews. When the Utah Legislature passed the Landowners Liability Act in 1992, protecting landowners who opened their property to public use, Sturgis and fellow visionary Jan Wilking incorporated the Mountain Trails Foundation, a nonprofit devoted to expanding the trail system. Sturgis later returned as the foundation's CEO in 2010, ushering in an era of exponential growth until his retirement in 2021. Today Park City boasts more than 400 miles of trails and, since 2012, has held Gold-level Ride Center status from the International Mountain Bicycling Association — the first place on earth to earn it.
The 2026 edition, presented by Offset Bier Co., sold out well in advance. Every registered rider receives a pair of custom Tour des Suds socks, a meal ticket, and a beverage — beer for those 21 and over with ID, or a nonalcoholic option. E-bikes are not permitted, a nod to the event's old-school, self-propelled ethos.
Over the years, the race has produced its share of genuine athletic feats, often delivered with a wink. In 2011, a 17-year-old Keegan Swenson, now a fixture of the U.S. national cycling team, set a course record of 39 minutes on the old course. In 2015, the 36th edition drew a then-record 296 riders, and Taylor Fletcher — a U.S. Olympic nordic combined athlete who had been ribbed the year before for winning without a costume — took the win in 47 minutes while dressed as Captain America in a costume "a couple inches thick."
The Tour des Suds is, at its heart, a celebration of the joy of trails. It is a day when a Pope costume stands next to a Fred Flintstone and a Gingerbread Man next to a Caesar, when the only thing more important than your finishing time is whether your costume survived the climb. For newcomers to Park City, it is a rite of passage; for locals, a chance to claim bragging rights in climbing prowess. On September 13, the costumed riders will once again point their handlebars at Empire Pass, and for a few hours, the serious business of mountain biking will give way to something far more important: a good time, and a few suds at the top.