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Ten years ago, Pete Ripmaster was running through the frozen Alaska woods in the middle of the night, lost and alone. He’d run ultramarathons before, but nothing like this: the Iditarod Trail Invitational, a grueling 350 miles through remote wilderness in the dead of winter. After rookie mistakes threw him 15 to 20 miles off course, he knew he was in last place and wasn’t sure he’d be able to get back on track. “I was really questioning what I’m doing out here,” Ripmaster says. “Like, what am I trying to prove?”

But then a Snowy Owl flew in front of him and landed in a nearby tree. It sat there, looking right at him. “It was certainly intrigued about who I was and what I was doing. And I was massively intrigued by this beautiful bird that I had never seen in my life,” he says. As the two watched each other, Ripmaster felt the moment was a spiritual encounter: “I had this overall feeling of not being alone anymore.”

He decided to keep running. For a while, the owl kept pace with him, swooping from treetop to treetop along the trail before flying off. And though Ripmaster finished dead last, he felt uplifted rather than disappointed by the experience. “It changed all my inner feelings of this doom and gloom to how lucky I am and how beautiful everything is,” he says.

Ripmaster kept running ultramarathons, and in 2018, when he ran the 1,000-mile version of the Iditarod Trail Invitational, he won it—with a time of 26 days, 13 hours, and 44 minutes. Now, he’s set his sights on an even more ambitious goal: to become the first person to run 100-mile ultras in all 50 states.

He took on that challenge not just for its own sake, but also to benefit the birds that have fascinated him for the past decade. After his Snowy Owl encounter, he started studying different types of owls, reading about them and observing them near his home in Asheville, North Carolina. With his current nationwide effort, launched in 2019, he aims to raise $50,000 for the nonprofit . Ripmaster, now 47, is calling the project , and so far he’s raised more than $38,000.

Ripmaster sees the project as a way to support the natural world that he spends so much time in.  Running in nature “gives me the arena to explore myself at a deep level,” he says. “I would say it’s therapy in certain ways.” Unlike shorter road races, ultras—technically anything longer than a marathon, which is 26.2 miles—wind through forests, along shorelines, and up and down mountains. They often take upwards of 24 hours to finish, so it’s not unusual for trail runners to be in the woods at all hours of the day and night, making them more likely than most to come across nocturnal creatures like owls.

When you’re out running ultras, “you see hundreds of birds a day,” says David Johnston, a world-class ultrarunner and friend of Ripmaster. “I think it ties in with you being an animal, too. It kind of brings you to their level, almost, because you’re putting extremes on yourself that only an animal in nature would do.”

As of September, Ripmaster has finished 29 hundred-milers toward the owl project—a mix of established races and “homemade” courses mapped out by himself or a friend. Johnston, who joined for three of those races, says Ripmaster can be single-minded. “He has a thing he needs to get done, and he puts his head down, and he does it,” Johnston says. But such focus doesn't stop him from having a little fun: During one 100-miler that they ran together, the duo played songs every 10 miles or so and took video of themselves doing dances.  

This isn’t the first time Ripmaster has used long-distance running to support a cause that is meaningful to him. He ran his first marathon in 2008, several years after losing his mom to cancer, thinking that the sport would help him stay active and ease his depression. Soon after, he decided to run a marathon in each state and raise money for breast cancer research in her honor. By 2013, he had achieved his goal and raised $62,000.

While the money went to a good cause, much of it supported large organizations, and Ripmaster didn’t know how it was ultimately used. This time, he hopes his fundraising can noticeably boost the budget of the Owl Research Institute, a small organization with only a few employees. The funding will help the group’s scientists study owls in their natural habitat, research that helps shape forest management and habitat conservation efforts.

One key project focuses on the species that started Ripmaster on his adventure—the Snowy Owl, says Denver Holt, founder and president of the Owl Research Institute. Institute scientists have been studying the species in Utqiaġvik (formerly called Barrow), Alaska, since 1992, monitoring populations of Snowies and their main food source, hamster-like rodents called lemmings. Both populations have declined, and the researchers are trying to determine why. This kind of long-term wildlife research can be hard to maintain, Holt says: “Here in the Arctic, stuff is super expensive and very difficult to do.” Ripmaster’s funding will help bring on personnel and buy equipment to keep the Snowy Owl project going.

Finishing all 50 runs will probably take another 4 or 5 years, Ripmaster says. He’s planning to run his last 100-miler in Montana, where the institute is based, with a big fundraiser party to celebrate. Ripmaster says it will mark the end of not only this project, but also his ultrarunning career. “I have nothing else to give the sport, if I can finish this project, which is daunting,” he says. No longer needing to train for ultras will free him up to spend more time with his family, including his two teenage daughters—and to keep studying owls.

With guidance from Holt, Ripmaster has already learned a lot. Now he’s always looking for signs of owls when he’s on the trail. Instead of listening to music on runs, he keeps his ears open for their calls. He’s seen only that one Snowy Owl, but he’s also spotted Great Horned, Barred, Eastern Screech, Saw-whet, and Barn Owls. He hopes to join Holt in Alaska someday to help out with the Snowy Owl project—and reconnect with the species that pulled him out of a low point and shifted his perspective.