Meet Scott Johnston

Scott Johnston came of age in Boulder, Colorado during the 70s. He was drawn to climbing, skiing and mountain running before they were things and long before there were books about training for these sports. This meant a lot of self-experimentation with training ideas from traditional sports. While earning his degree in Mechanical Engineering with a minor in Math Scott’s curiosity led him to develop a keen interest in the theories and methodologies of training and he began a deep dive into sports science.

Through dozens of books, over the next 20 years Scott pieced together the intellectual framework that underpins the training philosophy that guides each Evoke Endurance coach. Years later a mutual friend introduced Scott to one of the preeminent American alpinists, Steve House. Scott went on to coach Steve through the bulk of his fruitful professional climbing career. During that period Scott also had a 15 year cross-country ski coaching career that resulted in several national championships culminating in four of his skiers making the 2012 Olympic team.

On the back of Steve’s international success Scott and Steve published their first book, Training for the New Alpinism. This book expanded on the methods Scott had used when coaching Steve as well as providing the physiologic justification for those methods.

Subsequently, Scott was the principal author of the book, Training for the Uphill Athlete, co-written with Kilian Jornet. These two books were intended as manuals that a motivated reader could use to direct their own training.

Through these books Scott has been able to bring to bear his deep knowledge and practical experience of more traditional endurance sports like cross country skiing to the world of mountain endurance sports like mountaineering, ski mountaineering and ultra-running.

As a result of the popularity of the books Steve and Scott started Uphill Athlete. Years later Scott and 17 of the original Uphill Athlete coaches left to form Evoke Endurance with the goal of educating the mountain endurance athlete community through free access to the accumulated knowledge of Evoke’s coaching staff on this website.

Scott enjoys sharing his knowledge with others. Be that through coaching world class ultra-runners and alpinists or conducting deep dive training sessions with the coaches.