Rick Emerson
Assistant Race Director

Rick Emerson is a self-described outdoor enthusiast who received a BS degree in Management from the University of Idaho and his MBA degree from Atkinson Graduate School of Management at Willamette University.

He and his wife of 24 years, Julie, began their backcountry adventures in the Adirondack Mountains of New York – with a flash flood and a long, dark hike out in the middle of the night. Much has been learned, experienced, and explored since then. Rock climbing came later in life, which led to ice climbing, and was ultimately followed by ground pounding. Rick’s prior claim to fame before Primal Quest was being hauled out of the Wyoming backcountry by four women. Recent trips include Buckskin Gulch and Paria Canyon in Utah and Arizona and the Maah Daah Hey Trail in North Dakota.

A transplant to South Dakota in 1991, Rick has explored much of western South Dakota hunting and training for adventure races. Like many AR folks, he started with sprint races, gravitated to longer distances, and last participated in MIX 2007 in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

Designing the course for Primal Quest Badlands is a dream come true – for Rick and for his teammates from Black Hills 4. The diversity of western South Dakota supports every AR discipline – with world class mountain biking, lots of vertical elevation, and tough navigation. Couple those offerings with scenery to drool over and you have the best venue ever for “The World’s Most Challenging Human Endurance Competition.”