Published on June 18, 2026 09:05 am
Catalan ultrarunner Killian Jornet was jogging on the slopes of 14,021-foot-high Wilson Peak in Colorado’s San Juan Range last September when he spotted an abandoned mining cart looming against the cliffs. Jornet, who was climbing all the peaks above 14,000 feet in the contiguous United States for a project called States of Elevation, was shocked by the discovery.
“It’s abandoned, it’s not active anymore, but it’s still very shocking,” said Jornet, 38. Outside. “It makes you consider all the extraction that took place there.”
Jornet took a personal lesson from the ore cart: When industrialization comes to the wild backcountry, its effects will last for decades or even centuries.
This year, Jornet is dedicating his ultramarathon racing to a campaign born from that realization. He is promoting the protection of American public lands through branding, online messaging and interviews. When he lines up for California’s Western States 100 Endurance Run on June 27, he’ll run wearing a hat emblazoned with the slogan “Keep Public Lands in Public Hands.”
Jornet posted a letter on his website on June 18 detailing his views on the state of American public lands. “If States of Elevation has taught me anything, it’s that the privilege of access comes with a non-negotiable cost: responsibility,” Jornet wrote. “It means advocating for wild places that can’t speak for themselves.”
During his States of Elevation project, Jornet climbed 67 different peaks and traveled between them by running or biking.
he told Outside Throughout the project, it was impossible to ignore the legacy of mining in the San Juan Mountains. Old mine sites appear as old industrial ruins in an otherwise beautiful alpine landscape: brown wooden buildings, collapsed ore bins, rusted machinery, tailings piles, and open mine gates cut into steep slopes.
“You can see it’s polluted,” Jornet said. “In a place that is otherwise very clean, you can see the trash and pollution in the watercolors and the rocks.”
Jornet’s push comes as the federal government has rolled back environmental protections on millions of acres of public lands. In May, the Bureau of Land Management rescinded the Conservation and Landscape Health Rule, also known as the Public Lands Rule, which had put conservation on equal footing with mining, grazing and drilling across 245 million acres of public lands. Also in May, the Trump administration signed an executive order that opened millions of acres of protected public lands to bikes, trucks and all-terrain vehicles. Amidst the current US government’s push for “energy dominance”, Jornet is concerned that public lands are facing increasing pressure from development, including mining and oil and gas exploration. And once industrial development begins, there is no looking back, he said.
“Seeing so many exploited areas that are now barren without animals or plants, I saw how the ecosystem has been compromised,” he said. “It will never be the same. It may become a different ecosystem, but it can never go back to what it was.”
Looking at American public lands from a European perspective
In Western Europe, where Jornet was born and raised, large tracts of undisturbed nature, such as still exist in the US West, are rare. “There are villages and roads everywhere,” he said. “It is not possible to run 50 miles without finding anything human.”
Jornet said that because there is so little open land left, citizens are united in the belief that it should be protected. For example, in the Alps, after decades of ski resort expansion, many people now oppose further corporate infrastructure projects and are willing to stand against them.
The abundance of open public lands in America can create the opposite reaction: complacency, he said. People may take it for granted, at least until the road is built and other signs of development start appearing. And then it’s too late.
Jornet pointed to the Trump administration’s proposal last summer to rescind the “Roadless Rule” as a direct threat to the undeveloped backcountry. The 2001 Roadless Areas Protection 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 by new roads.
“People say, ‘Oh, it’s just a road, it’s not like we’re selling a national park,'” Jornet said. “But this is how truly wild places are lost, not all at once, but street by street, lease by lease.”
Norway’s right to visit rules
In Norway, where Jornet has lived for the past decade, he is accustomed to a different relationship with the land. The “right to roam”, known there as Allemansrätten, gives people broad freedom to walk, ski, swim, paddle, forage, and camp on barren land, even if privately owned, as long as they do so responsibly (i.e., leave no trace, respect wildlife and livestock, stay away from homes, farms, and cultivated areas).
This right is legally protected under Norway’s Outdoor Recreation Act. Sweden and Finland have similar access rights, as do some other parts of Europe, including Scotland.
“This means that even on private property, you can’t own nature,” Jornet said.
In Jornet’s view, shared access also helps prevent land from being treated as a resource controlled by any one person or entity. If land is desertified or overused, the system fails for everyone.
Jornet acknowledged that it would be difficult to transplant a public access system like Norway’s directly to the US. He says that there is no single way to preserve nature. “There are many different ways to match the context of the location,” Jornet said.
The main thing is not to be complacent. “There is a real threat to public lands in America with the current administration,” Jornet said. “Everyone needs to talk about this. What you have is rare and worth fighting for.”
Jornet’s activity in western states 100
Jornet’s “Keep public lands in public hands” hat was made by Ennormal, the outdoor gear brand he co-founded with Spanish footwear company Camper in 2022. After running in the Western States 100 wearing the cap, Jornet will bring it to raise awareness and support for efforts to protect American public lands.
During a ten-day stay in Northern California he is also hosting a number of events through the Killian Jornet Foundation, including trail building and community runs, and information sessions with local ecologists and public lands advocates.
Jornet said Outside He did not initially guess that as a European, he was the right person to speak for American public lands. He said he was aware that public lands management was a highly polarized topic in America, and he was opening himself up to criticism, both as a professional athlete and as a person.
“I decided I’m at the point where I don’t care if people criticize me,” he said. “As far as my image goes, well, we all eventually fall into the ground and get eaten up by worms. So why preserve an image if it’s better to preserve what we care about?”
Jornet hopes that 100 years from now, people will still be running on long-distance trails through wooded landscapes in America.
Jornet’s open letter about public lands
During last year’s States of Elevation project, I made my way across many different landscapes of the American West. High alpine peaks, forests, deserts, volcanoes, long empty roads, and places where I could walk for hours without seeing many signs of human presence.
Many of the places I crossed are public lands. This means that they are not owned by a single person or a single company, but are shared. They are spaces that can be accessed, discussed, cared for and protected by the public.
The history of many of these landscapes is much older than the idea of public lands. Long before they became public lands, they were home to indigenous communities, whose relationship with these places continues today.
This is important to remember. This reminds us that access, ownership and management are never neutral considerations.
But ownership and management of public lands is not a passive guarantee of security. This is an active, ongoing agreement.
No management system is perfect. Even when land is public, decisions are complicated. Funding may be limited. Bureaucracy can be slow. Various interests may collide: conservation, recreation, grazing, mining, energy, path maintenance, restoration, access.
So the question is not just whether these lands will remain public, but also how they are managed, who participates in those decisions, and how we care for them.
Public ownership matters because it gives the people a voice. This creates space for debate, accountability and democratic oversight. It can also act as an important firewall to help protect landscapes from permanent changes that are difficult or impossible to reverse: uncontrolled growth, fragmentation, or resource depletion.
For those of us who run, climb, ski, bike, or hike, public lands can feel like stadiums, sanctuaries, and testing grounds. It’s easy to see them as our goals, our training, our escape places.
But we are not the only users of these places. We are a part of them, and we benefit from them whenever we breathe clean air, drink water from a river, walk in a forest, or find peace in a wild place.
Because we depend on these lands for physical and emotional refuge, we cannot afford to become passive visitors.
If States of Elevation has taught me anything, it’s that the privilege of access comes with a non-negotiable cost: responsibility.
It means advocating for the wild places that can’t speak for themselves.
We are temporary visitors passing through landscapes that have existed for millennia. By leading the way as active stewards today, we ensure that untamed forests remain intact, vibrant, and free for the generations that follow right behind us.
Public lands need advocates, and many local and national organizations across the United States are working every day to protect them. Through the Kilian Jornet Foundation, we want to help give visibility to these efforts by showcasing their work and sharing engagement opportunities.
