There aren’t enough air quality monitors in Ogden. The very Utah solution, of course, is to run up and down a mountain as many times as possible to raise money for more of them.
Motivation to improve air quality was one thing that powered 113 athletes to compete in the seventh annual Running Up For Air Malan’s Peak race at the end of February. Another was a tent at the 29th Street Trailhead stocked with fruit, energy chews, pierogies and pizza. It takes a lot of calories to charge up and down a mountain in the three, six, 12 and 24-hour competitions.
Runners tackle a quad-busting climb of more than 2,000 feet in three miles, then head back to 29th Street and do it all over again.
Race director Tara Warren had been awake since the previous morning, minus a two-hour nap.
“I'm a mom, I'm a community member, and I'm a runner, and moving my feet to make a difference and my voice is what I can do,” she said. “So instead of complaining about the bad air, this is what we're going to do to make a difference.”
The race series started in 2016 on Grandeur Peak in the often air quality-challenged Salt Lake Valley. It’s expanded to seven other locations across Utah and nearby Western states. The original idea was to climb up and out of the polluted valley and raise money to improve the air quality.
Warren used to participate in the Grandeur Peak challenge, but it didn’t sit right with her.
“Driving down there, I'm thinking, ‘OK, so Running Up For Air, we're trying to reduce air pollution, etc., like, that's kind of weird that I'm driving,’” she said.
So in 2019, Warren launched the Malan’s Peak edition. The registration fees, plus any funds raised on the side, previously supported statewide charities. That changed in 2025, when Warren linked up with a sustainability effort between Ogden City and Weber State University.
“To stand in front of the group and, like, look everybody in the eye and say, ‘You know what, guys, this stays right here in our little community, and here's how we're going to try to make clean air improvements,’ is cool,” Warren said. “It's a big deal.”
The roughly $13,000 raised that year paid for four air quality monitors, said Lorenzo Long, Ogden’s sustainability coordinator. They’ll soon install the monitors and then add more with funds from the 2026 race, he said.
“In order to make air quality improvements, we kind of have to know what our air quality is right now, right? So data is power.”
Increased monitoring will help Ogdenites decide whether to work out indoors or outdoors and how to get from place to place, said Demetrios Pagonis, assistant professor of biochemistry and chemistry at Weber State University. He’s also part of the joint city and university sustainability team.
Ogden’s monitors will measure PM2.5 and PM10 particulate matter and feed data into the online TELLUS AirView map. The city will handle maintenance.
Monitor locations have not been finalized, but Long expects them to be on university and city property, including the airport.
PM2.5 particles are 1/30th the size of a human hair and can lodge in tissue and affect the heart and lungs. PM10 particles can cause breathing problems.
Air quality tends to be better in Ogden than in the Salt Lake Valley, where the surrounding mountains lock in the inversions, Pagonis said. One variable, however, is dust blowing off the drying Great Salt Lake, and the data is limited.
“Right now, we don't know how many dust storms we are missing, because there have been significant gaps in our measurement network,” he said.
Davis County recently installed sensors, and the Utah Department of Environmental Quality is working to add more to western Salt Lake County.
“We will have monitors from Salt Lake County all the way up through Ogden, which will give us a really good sense of just how often these dust storms are happening, how severe they are, and how long they last and how quickly they move,” he said.
That data could also help scientists study the health impacts down the line, he said.
Ogden’s new sensors won’t just measure pollution in the moment. Long said the data will allow the city to study how air quality changes over time.
“As you look at long-term trends, you can also identify perhaps problem areas in the city, and then you can look at why that's happening,” he said.
After working with Running Up For Air last year, Long put his money where his mouth is and signed up to compete. After three laps up and down Malan’s Peak in under six hours, his green sneakers were muddy. He also said his quads hurt.
“That's a lot more than I usually put on my legs, and a lot more elevation gain, so definitely feeling it,” he said. “But it's for a good cause, right?”
Macy Lipkin is a Report for America corps member who reports for KUER in northern Utah.
