Bear Reconnaissance (Part 2)

One week left to the Bear 100! I am pretty excited to get on the trail and test my will one year after finishing Leadville.

I have spent the last week camping up Logan Canyon in many places off the sides of Forest Service Roads. The camping is pretty good, with the only exception being the neighbors. The scenery is great. The trails are pretty good singletrack and ATV trails mostly with a little 4WD road running thrown in. The most interesting thing about the terrain is the livestock that are been raised free range. One morning I woke up to about 200 sheep moving through my campsite on the side of a road up Beaver Creek. This morning I woke up to cows in my camp site. They were sniffing my fold-up chair. Probably wondered where I got it.

Speaking of sheep... I had a first on the trail the other day. In running into a herd of sheep I also ran into the three sheep dogs that were tending the flock. One of the dogs was barking at me, though it was also wagging its tail. I wasn't quite sure what they would do if I had proceeded to try and walk through the sheep, remaining on the trail. No one was nearby so if they had attacked I would have been alone in trying to fend them off. I finally bushwhacked around them, giving them a wide berth.

My days have consisted of getting up when I felt like it, making breakfast and driving to a trailhead where I could recon some trail that is a part of the course. I have made some mistakes in efficiency for sure. There have been several times when I could have run a section of trail and made a loop back to my car by some road. In one instance it would have been shorter to run a loop of trail and road, I would have  seen more of the course, it would have been shorter, and it would've avoided an out and back. Another piece of efficiency would have been in bringing a bike. Because most of the Aid Stations are progressively higher as the course unfolds it would be beneficial to leave a bike at the higher aid station, start running at the lower aid station, then take the bike back to the car, coasting the whole way. I thought about bringing a bike but then thought against it. I don't know why I guess I shanked that one too! Maybe someday I will create a framework for looking at a course and breaking it down into reconnable sections in an efficient manor.