Weaselballs started as a mistake.
In August 2016, Jess Halverson was crewing her sister at the Leadville Trail 100. Marco Reid was pacing a friend through the Hope Pass out-and-back. Somewhere around mile 78, in the dark, between the Sugar Loaf aid station and the May Queen cutoff, a stretch of course tape came loose from its stake, swung across the trail, and sent two runners — including Marco's — off-route for nineteen minutes. Nobody DNF'd that night. But Jess and Marco spent the next six weeks arguing about how something so small could cost so much in a 100-mile race, and by November they'd rented a 480-square-foot room above a bike shop on Broadway and started painting reflective flags by hand.
The first run of 200 Weaselballs sold out in nine days. The replacement program — the one that now sits at 11,400+ flags honored — launched the same month, because the first 200 weren't quite right and we knew it. Seven years later the workshop is at Suite 3B, 2410 Broadway, with eleven full-time craftspeople, and the room above the bike shop still has the original paint-splattered floorboards.
We have DNF'd. We have been the runner who came in at 29:59 and the pacer who missed a turn in the dark. Every product in this catalog was built for the version of the sport where those mistakes happen — and the people who refuse to let them end a race.
