Great traverses

Here, a race is no longer measured in hours but in days. Great traverses set their own pace: you sleep little, you sometimes navigate alone, and the terrain — pass, ridge, bog — dictates your speed far more than the watch. Adventure and self-reliance come before the clock, and simply reaching the finish is already a victory.

The SwissPeaks Trail links the summits of Valais over 360 kilometres and 26,000 metres of climbing. The TransPyrenea crosses the Pyrenees from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean in near-total self-sufficiency. The Spine Race follows England's Pennine Way in the depths of winter, through rain and wind. The Tor des Glaciers loops the Aosta Valley by its highest passes. The Yukon Arctic Ultra takes the idea to the extreme, in the polar cold of Canada's far north.

These multi-day routes suit the Plotrek poster particularly well: it shows at a single glance a traverse that the body took a week to cover.