On a beautiful Sunday in September of 2004, Danny Bogner, Jay Funsch and Dusty Sharp set out from Big Bear to make a special run to Heartbreak Ridge. In July of 2004, only a few months prior, our So Cal Broncos brother and USMC Captain Alan Rowe was killed in action in Iraq. Heartbreak Ridge was a trail that Alan Rowe had asked each of us to run with him on different occasions, but we weren’t able to do it before he shipped out for his fateful third tour in Iraq. The three of us ran the trail that day in his memory. While stopping for lunch at the top of the ridge, we paused to remember Captain Rowe, and erected a makeshift marker in his honor on top of a rocky knoll at the summit. We would return to the spot a few months later, on Memorial Day 2005, to install a more permanent marker, which became the Alan Rowe Monument on Heartbreak Ridge.