Photo of Icky Ocky in his handerpants by Jayme Burtis

At last, your latest raison d’etre (don’t you love it when we speak French?) – registration for the 2014 Coyote Cohorts Backbone Trail Ultra is now open on Ultra Signup. Let the games begin!

You can sign up here as a player until Feb. 15th, or as a volunteer until March 8th. We’ve capped entrants at 175, but will maintain a wait list in the event we hit capacity on those of questionable-enough sanity to sign up for this 2nd traverse of the Backbone (we think it likely, but we don’t want to be too full of ourselves).

A few items of note:

• There are 2 start groups this year, as opposed to the three in last years games. Aid station cutoff times and other relevant details have been updated on our website.
• Pre-requisites are completion of a 50 mile event of comparable difficulty and one day’s worth (minimum) of trail maintenance prior to the coin toss.
• We’ve added volunteer registration to Ultra Signup, so’s you can ensure you get your free shirt of choice for the hours of suffering you will endure with no other personal gain (although if you volunteer after Feb 15th we can’t 100% guarantee availability of shirts.) After you are formally conscripted, one of our volunteer coordinators will contact you to, well, coordinate your volunteer post. They’re pretty good at that coordinating thing.
• Training runs: there will be 4 official ones. We don’t know exactly when yet. But “Like” us on our Facebook page or keep us off your e-mail Spam list and we’ll let you know relevant beta as soon as we have it.
• Nicknames: returning players will be assigned their previous nom de’ guerre; new recruits will have little say whatsoever in what nickname will be given them.  Hey, we gotta’ have our fun somehow and at someone else’s expense.
• Apparel: while you won’t have a choice as to the color of your shirt, you will be able to choose between the far more important option of long-sleeved versus short-sleeved Patagonia technical shirts. They’ll be great, trust us, and the colors will set off your complexion perfectly.

Oh, and we’re sorry for the delay in the registration go-live. From the usual mashups with various park service authorities, a brilliant last-minute assist from the national government, and the acquisition of permissions from certain celebrity land owners and all, we erred on the side of caution.

OK, what are you waiting for? Sign up already. Here.

Toodles! And happy trails!