Is Big Cottonwood a Good BQ Course in 2027?

Published September 12, 2026 · Estimates, updated each registration cycle

Short answer: it is still one of the fastest clock times you can run in North America, and for the 2027 Boston Marathon it is also one of the most expensive. REVEL Big Cottonwood starts high on Guardsman Pass at roughly 9,625 feet and finishes at Cottonwood High School in Murray at roughly 4,377 feet. That is a net drop of about 5,250 feet, which lands squarely in the middle tier of the Boston Athletic Association's new time index: 3,000 to 5,999 feet of net drop adds ten minutes to the time you submit. Your finish still counts. It just counts as ten minutes slower than the number on the clock.

Where the course sits against the thresholds

The index has three bands. A drop of 1,500 to 2,999 feet adds five minutes, 3,000 to 5,999 feet adds ten, and a course dropping 6,000 feet or more cannot be used for qualifying at all. Big Cottonwood is nowhere near the five minute band and not close enough to 6,000 feet to be shut out, so ten minutes is the number to plan around. Course data built from the route puts total descent at about 5,465 feet against only about 221 feet of climbing, which tells you how relentlessly one directional the race is. For the races on either side of the line, see which marathons are too downhill for Boston 2027.

What ten minutes actually costs

Runners tend to file the index under paperwork. It is not paperwork, it is a training block. Take a 36 year old woman, whose standard is 3:30:00. She runs 3:24:45 at Big Cottonwood, a buffer of 5:15 that matches our central estimate of what the 2027 cutoff will demand, and on a flat course that would be close to a coin flip. With ten minutes added, her submitted time becomes 3:34:45. That is not a borderline application. That is slower than the 3:30:00 standard, so it is not a qualifying time at all. To reach the same position she held on the raw clock she would need 3:14:45, a raw buffer of 15:15. The indexed courses do not make qualifying impossible, they move the bar, and runners who plan around the standard instead of the buffer get caught out. Our estimate is an estimate, not a BAA figure: the 2026 race cut at 4:34 under the standard and our central guess for 2027 is about 5:15, give or take roughly 1:45.

What the qualifying rate is telling you

Big Cottonwood used to be a qualifying factory. Around 27.4 percent of 2022 finishers ran a Boston qualifying time, then 21.3 percent in 2023 and 11.3 percent in 2024. In 2025 the figure fell to about 4.3 percent from roughly 1,179 finishers. The drop lines up with the BAA tightening its standards by five minutes for athletes under 60, which moved the target for most of the field without anyone running slower. Read the older numbers as history rather than as a forecast of your own chances, and note that none of those years carried the index.

How the race actually runs

Starting above 9,000 feet means thin air for the opening miles, which blunts the free speed exactly where the grade is steepest. The canyon descent is long and sustained, so the limiting factor is almost never breathing, it is quadriceps damage. Runners who have not trained downhill repeats arrive in the foothills with legs that will not turn over, and the closing stretch through the valley into Murray is far flatter than the elevation chart suggests. Weather adds a second split personality: the mountain start can sit near freezing while the valley finish warms up sharply, so the clothing you want at the gun is the clothing you will be carrying at mile 18. The same trade offs, in a smaller dose, show up in the REVEL Mt. Charleston review and at St. George.

Timing, if you ran it this weekend

The 2026 edition falls on Saturday, September 12, 2026. That is inside the qualifying window for the 2027 Boston Marathon, which opened on September 13, 2025, and it lands two days before qualifier registration opens on Monday, September 14, 2026. Applications close at 5:00 p.m. ET on Friday, September 18. A time from this weekend can therefore be submitted, provided the results are posted and your time is in the system before you apply. Give yourself the full week rather than the last hour, and check the calendar in the 2027 registration dates and the options in last chance qualifiers.

Verdict

Big Cottonwood is a good race and, for 2027, a poor value qualifier. If your only goal is a personal best on the clock, it delivers. If your goal is Boston, you are paying ten minutes for help the course may not give back, and you need a raw buffer near 15:15 to sit where a flat course runner sits at 5:15. Anyone with a time from a canyon race should work out the indexed number before deciding what to submit. Put your age, gender and both versions of your time into the cutoff predictor to see how each buffer would have fared against every real Boston cutoff since 2014.