From the 'list... (direct quote, I have no interest of any kind):

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From the HRH Board of Directors:

Thanks to all that have contributed to the discussion about the HRH
qualifiers. We would like to make clear that the changes were not made for
elitism nor were they to promote any particular race. This was also not to
artificially restrict the lottery numbers.  In fact we took great pains
over several months to clarify to ourselves why we have a qualifying
process and to put together an objective analysis to ensure the runs
selected support the intent of the qualifying policy. In the process we
reminded ourselves that it is not just runs that are considered tough, and
it is not even to ensure a runner will finish HRH. Our objective is about
safety in the mountains.

We describe on the website why we have qualifiers and what attributes we
expect of them. We gathered data reflecting those attributes from race
websites for all candidate races to use as a basis for comparison. The
data we looked at, as best we could determine from websites and race maps
included total climb, maximum elevation, number of sustained climbs
(>2k,>>3k), sustained running at high elevation, number of aid stations,
and maximum distance between aid stations. We also tried to gather the
potential for mountain weather, water/snow crossings, exposure to
drops,and navigation off trail, all of which are much harder to find and
in some cases we had to rely on familiarity of BOD members with individual
races. This allowed us to look at many race attributes to evaluate how
someone running that race might experience some of the conditions they
would find at Hardrock. In general, the qualifiers we kept had significant
climb plus at least two or three other traits we were looking for.

We continue to look at additional events and are aware of some new runs
that may stack up well when we take a look at them. We now have a process
in place to compare events and will be reviewing our set of qualifiers
yearly.

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Why bother having any east coast qualifiers then if elevation is a factor??? Barkley and Grindstone are pretty wicked events but participants are never "at elevation".

Ditto for Sawtooth, but that got the cut.  Which is why it's confusing.  I get why they're doing what they're doing.  Sawtooth is a freaking hard race, but no, it doesn't prepare you for Hardrock.  And neither does Grindstone.  Soooo...???  Why not just make it all mountain races to qualify?

Good article on irunfar.  Interesting comments.

http://www.irunfar.com/2013/11/my-thoughts-on-new-qualifying-races-for-western-states-and-hardrock.html