Sleepwalking bear

K and I rolled out for a peaceful ride on the snowy trails. She did some recalls, showing her polite tongue flick just before arriving at my feet, forewarning me that, although she was barging directly at me, she meant no harm.
The blue skies and snowy mountains awed me.
After riding with K, I heard a rumor that a north-facing remote trail had been packed down by an ATV. Sure enough, this usually impassable trail was ready for my snow bike!
I rolled easily along in the ATV tracks, enjoying the mountain views out to my west and scanning for animal tracks. This route is a favorite of cats, deer, and bear.

Suddenly, in the middle of the two tire tracks, I saw what initially looked like human boot tracks.
As I tried to ride while looking at the tracks, I noted that it looked like a four-legged animal had made them.
Then, the identity of the tracks became undeniable when I noticed claws protruding from some of the tracks.
No doubt, a very sleepy black bear walked this trail in the last few days. Bears do not truly hibernate. In other words, they don't allow their core body temperature to fall as low as the air temperature. Although they sleep for most of the winter, they awaken often, to toss and turn in the den or to go out for an amble. I suspect that this bear has already hibernated for at least a month but decided to go for a walk recently. Some scientists think that these short ambles play a key role in preventing the bear from losing too much muscle and bone mass despite lying still for close to 6 months.

Today, I followed the bear tracks for about a mile. No food, except an occasional rose hip, was available along the trail, and the bear left no scat. I doubt that he ate a thing. Rather, he just walked, enjoying a pretty winter day.

I've always thought that the north-facing slope that I traversed would be perfect for bear hibernation. It's rough and tumble terrain so it gets little traffic. Moreover, it builds up snow all winter long. Only a few sections of the trail ever see the sun from November through February. Building up a snow layer helps insulate a sleeping bear. Seeing those tracks today strengthens my view that it's a favorite denning spot for our ursines.

After exploring a snowy slope today, I'm heading off to the high desert for a camping trip. I'll be far from any internet connection so this blog will be on vacation!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Winter and wildlife

Twenty degrees and no clouds in the sky - a perfect day for a snow bike ride! K and I vanished into the forest early, and explored our territory. Our network of trails has gradually expanded as we've packed down the snow on more of them and as the sun has done its work. K found a dirt patch to stand in rising rays of the sun this morning.We rode directly to a lookout and gazed westward at our mountains, towering up into the endless blue sky. I could lose myself in this view every day.I rolled a little further out onto the lookout point and glanced at the ski area slopes. The resort opened today - but, for now, my decision is that I won't be dancing and gliding down the slopes on my telemark skis. I think that the dangers are too great for the fragile state of my spine.I remember the day before my fusion surgery years ago. I went telemark skiing all day long as a last hurrah. As I wistfully departed at the end of the day, I promised myself that I'd be back someday. That's one promise that I might end up breaking.

After that wave of morose thoughts, I looked back toward the east, and I saw K standing guard over me next to my snow bike. The sun rose behind her. No matter what - I have many things in my life to be thankful for. Indeed, I have a deluge of good things raining down on me. I decided to focus on them.
You might wonder why I think that riding a bike in snow is safer than downhill skiing. It's mostly about the number of hours that I've spent honing my biking skills and judgment. Those bike hours dwarf my downhill telemark skiing hours. It's also that skiing at a resort involves trusting that other people won't bombard recklessly into me. The bottom line is that I don't trust 'em! Finally, skiing routinely involves lots of spine twisting and biking doesn't. That last factor means that biking stresses my spine much less than telemark skiing.

After pedaling away from the lookout point, K and I churned over the frozen snow, moving silently through the forest except for the crunch of the snow crust under my wheels. We fell into that wonderful meditative zone, where physical effort lets the mind float free. It feels to me like I stop being a separate entity from the rest of the world when I settle into this mind state. I unconsciously monitor K's whereabouts, notice tracks, and scan for animals as I pedal. But, I do little else.

After seeing countless deer and coyote tracks, K and I stopped at another nice vista. I propped my bike, and she hopped on a boulder. It looked, just for a second, like she planned to ride away on my bike!
I dropped K at home, and I kept riding the snowbike. I was the first human to trample a favorite trail of mine. However, elk, deer, and a bobcat had walked purposefully along the trail. This trail never fails to harbor bobcat tracks, and I've become oddly attached to this bobcat! But, today, he had left a patch of bloody urine so I'm worried about him. It's a tough life for a wild animal. A urinary track infection could kill him while we and our pets can get antibiotics to cure it. I'll keep watching for his tracks with my fingers crossed.

Below, you can see that although no people have used this trail since the snow, plenty of forest dwellers have!
My Fatback snow bike makes me feel like I have super powers. To my amazement, I was able to churn along this trail almost the whole way. I stalled only briefly when the snow deepened and the pitch turned upward.
In addition to the solitude and quiet, my reward was a wonderful view.
After arriving home, I checked our motion-sensitive wildlife camera outside the house, and a coyote had made a lengthy visit last night. I'm truly starting to wonder if our infrared camera, now posted out in the forest but previously posted next to our other wildlife camera, somehow scared the coyotes away. The true test will be if I return the infrared camera to our yard and the coyotes flee again... but after spending a long time setting up the IR camera in the forest, I hesitate to do that. Perhaps I'll do that test if no animals show up near the IR camera in the forest.

I liked this particular photo (out of 60 taken) because the coyote appears to have used a 'calming signal'. Among dogs, lifting a paw is a way to tell other dogs to chill out. I wonder if the coyote was telling others in his pack to relax.
The infrared camera is in theory the camera that causes wildlife less stress, and it is now pointed at a rocky spot where bobcat scat appears regularly. It's at the base of a pile of boulders on an east-facing slope above a meadow.
I sincerely hope that the camera doesn't somehow scare away the animals who have used this site for years, based on my observations. I'll keep you posted. My goal now is *not* to check the IR camera for at least a week so that my scent doesn't deter animals from visiting. So, the updates won't be too frequent. This hobby takes patience, and patience is not my strong suit!

I could learn a thing or two about patience from my Labs who are now waiting like silent saints for me to take them for a hike!

K and I meet the pack on the trails

K and I rolled out early again today after yesterday's ride reminded me of how I love snow biking when the snowpack is still frozen solid early in the morning. In the photo below, if you zoom in, you can see that K is wriggling on her back on the trail just as it curves to the right. I guess that another advantage to early morning riding is that the snow feels good on her back!
The color of K's fur in the morning light melts my heart.
We stopped to gaze at the mountains. My favorite snowy weather lookout sits directly on a lion path where I saw tracks multiple times last winter. Today, just after I captured the photo below, I heard what I thought was growling coming from a wall of boulders. K, who uncharacteristically hovered within a foot of me, turned and started growling back at the boulders. I decided that it was time to move onto someplace else in the forest but at least we'd glimpsed the mountains!
Snowbiking is not a fast mode of transport until the trails get perfectly packed - and they haven't achieved that nirvana state yet. Since our latest snow, K has seemed confused about why I'm not going as fast as usual. So, she gallops ahead, and then has favorite 'rest stops' to wait for me.
This morning, we ran into the pack of seven dogs and their human. Their pack is comprised of a clear-cut alpha dog, mostly German Shepherd, who I'll call the "Enforcer". The others are a Shelti, and five miniature dachshunds (who I'll call the "Littles"). Their human, a friendly neighbor, took some photos of me and the dogs interacting. Some of her dogs were distracted by something in the forest and don't appear in any photos. However, the others were focused on me and K.

Below, we just met a minute before. I'm trying to calm the "Littles" who bark in a frenzy, and sometimes yelp as if they're being hurt, until they make friends with me. I need to reestablish our friendship each time we meet to quiet them. At this instant, I wasn't aware that the Enforcer was sitting behind my bike with her eye on K, who is skulking to the left of my bike. K's body language says that she's not comfortable with the situation.
A few seconds later, the Enforcer has moved very close to the back of my bike and K is trying to crawl underneath it either to get closer to me or to use the bike as a barrier.
I feel kind of silly that I was oblivious to K's consternation until she wriggled under my bike to get away from the Enforcer who was now on the opposite side of my bike, where K had been just seconds before.
Finally, the Enforcer decided to march around to K's side of my bike. K lowered her body, didn't look at the Enforcer, leaned on my leg, and started biting at the snow - likely a 'displacement' activity to release nervous energy. The posture adopted by the Enforcer in the photo below makes me nervous. It looks like she's ready to pounce on K, and believe me, she doesn't play with K. Rather, she puts K in her place. However, nothing happened today. K seems to have figured out how to be sufficiently submissive to keep the Enforcer from attacking. I should add that the Enforcer has never hurt K physically, even when she has pounced on K while making growling noises.
This encounter ended with no altercations. But, with photos taken by someone else, I can see how stressful these meetings are for K. I think that the sheer number of dogs in the running pack makes a solo dog feel vulnerable.

After K and I had ridden our local trail network to our hearts' content, I dropped her off and switched to my ice bike with extreme studded tires on it. It turned out to be a bad choice because many trails along our road looked worth trying to ride on my snow bike - but I knew that I shouldn't even try to ride them on the relatively skinny tires on my ice bike. Oh well.

One good thing came out of riding on the roads. I passed my friend's horse standing in her meadow, and I saw that a utility wire had fallen from the poles. It lay curled and coiled in the meadow snow, about 25 yards from the horse. I immediately went to find my friend who lives a short distance from her horses. She wasn't home but I found a neighbor who knew how to move the horse to a small safe area and called the utility company. I was glad that I passed the scene when I did!

On a final note, a coyote has visited on a couple of nights in the past week. On one occasion several nights ago, the infrared wildlife camera picked up his image but our regular one did not. Notice that despite the very soft red light used to take this night-time photo, the coyote still has eye-shine. That fact made me wonder if it seems brighter to him than to me. I took my own photo with it - and I don't get red eye or eye shine.
Then, two nights ago, I'd just brought in the infrared camera to ready it for the field, and a coyote visited. Our wildlife camera with a regular incandescent flash caught his photo. What a luxurious coat! His eye shine doesn't look any more intense with the blinding incandescent flash, making me wonder even more if the infrared camera is indeed less disconcerting to an animal than the regular camera. I bought the IR camera specifically to reduce my impact on the animals.
I'm moving the infrared camera to near the entrance to a bobcat hide-out. It's under a boulder on an east-facing slope just above a meadow. I find bobcat scat there every time I check. I've learned that coyotes attack and eat bobcats and not vice-versa, much to my surprise. So, our regular coyote visitors outside our house likely deter bobcat visitors (I've captured only one bobcat photo by our house in six months despite regular sightings by my neighbors). I hope to get a bobcat photo out in the field!

Sunrise ride and dog training class

Today, we rolled onto the firmly packed trails early, just as first sun rays filtered over the eastern horizon. The sunrise embued the snowy mountains with an otherworldly aura.
The melted and then refrozen snow formed intricate sculptures around tall golden grass, flattened juniper shrubs, and pine saplings. The long shadows embellished the alien moonscape and allowed me to take a photo of me and K without using my camera's timer.
K's fur glowed in the sunrise, looking like rich milk chocolate.
By the end of our ride, the sun glowed high above the hills to our east, and another bluebird day had emerged.
After our ride, K and I went to drop-in dog training class, held at a dog park about 3000' below my home. The transformation in the world as I dropped in altitude on our wall-like road astonished me. It's commonly said that for every 1000' loss in elevation, autumn-winter is 10 days behind. By that logic, the season today at the mile-high elevation of dog training class was the same as a month ago at my home. Moreover, under normal climactic conditions, the temperature rises by 5.8°F for every 1000 ft of elevation lost. And, as that rule predicts, it was 15-20 degrees warmer down at dog training class than at home.

As you can see in the photo below, brown grass, rather than snow, predominated in the foothills behind our dog class site.
K behaved confidently for most of class, after she quashed her pre-class hyperactivity. During the opening play session, she rarely hovered next to me. Clinging to me is her modus operendi when she's nervous. We knew only a couple of dogs in class today but, in the photo below, she took the initiative to meet some of the rowdy puppies.
Looking at the photo above, K's usual demeanor with other dogs is obvious. Her body, head, and tail are lowered. She wags her tail widely back and forth, just a bit below horizontal. She never approaches another dog's head straight on, but comes in from the side or back. Her body language constantly broadcasts that she's not a threat and is willing to appease the new dogs if needed.

Interestingly, when K and R recently met our local dog pack of seven running with their human, the 'enforcer' of the pack, a German Shepherd, approached R as if she meant to establish who was boss. Despite K's long-lasting fears of the enforcer, she body-blocked for R, stepping between him and the GSD. That diffused the situation, and R has been much less fearful around the pack than he used to be. The surprising aspect of the story was K's courage relative to how skittish she tends to be around assertive dogs. Although she didn't take an aggressive stance, she moved into a position to block for her brother.

We ended class working on down-stays. At first, I kept K on the outside of the group, where she could monitor everyone's activity. When she's in her 'nervous' mode, she breaks out of down-stays if she can't see all the other dogs. However, today, she calmly acted like the dozen dogs and their humans didn't faze her. So, I tried moving her to the middle of the pavilion and then gradually worked myself away from her. Each time she let me step a little further away, I returned and rewarded her. By the end, I could chat with another handler at a distance while K lay by herself. Although K's eyes stayed glued on me, she stuck like velcro to the ground and showed no distress. Way to go, Girl!
After reading about the trials and tribulations of other dogs with fear issues, I feel lucky, in an odd way, that her sporadic fear problems are medically based. When her thyroid levels dip too low, it causes her to be fearful and unpredictable. And, over the summer, her smoldering chronic pancreatitis probably contributed to the crazy swings in her behavior. By controlling both of those medical problems, we seem to have reached calm seas for the moment. Let's stay there!

I have a new challenge ahead of me. I want to start taking R to training class on alternate weeks. However, I feel like I'll break K's heart. She loves going (when she's feeling well), and she's my special girl. But, I'd like to learn to work as a tighter team with R, for those days when he joins us on our morning mountain bike ride. Today was going to be R's first day... but I chickened out when I looked at K's face. Has anyone else faced this dilemma? Any advice?

Although I enjoy dog training class every time (it's the fastest-passing hour of the week because I become so focused on working with K), I'm always glad to flee the bustle of the city and glide down our driveway into the peaceful forest. Even though it's a chilly winter day up here and a warm autumn day down there, I'm happiest up here in the thin air where I can gaze at the alpenglow over the mountains every morning if I want to.

Mellow and melting winter day

This morning, K eagerly peered out our windows, ready to romp on our trails. I was glad to see her enthusiasm because she had an upset stomach last night. I used to view that as a random non-worrisome event but, since her latest pancreatitis episode, I fret far more than I used to. So far, she seems OK.
Yesterday afternoon, when I attempted to ski on our trails, I discovered that the usual trampling had occurred. I used to get mad about this wanton destruction of my ski trail-breaking efforts but not any more. Now, I just view it as people packing the trails for my snowbike. Thanks to their efforts, K and I rolled out onto our trail network this morning! The left trail in the photo was a ski trail until yesterday... Now it's a Fatback trail!
K sat next to my amazing snow bike. Without this bike, riding on the trails would have been impossible today.
K doesn't look happy in the photo with my bike, does she? But, just a minute later, she probingly gazed at me and then launched into a silly fit of wriggling on her back in the snow.
It was another classic Colorado winter day. The blue sky rung deep and clear, contrasting with the white snow and green pine needles.
The ice crystals atop the snow glittered in the sunshine. An animal, perhaps a coyote, had galloped through this shimmering field of snow.
My bike amazed me as I churned along some trails that had loose and shifting snow. Although it was slow-motion mountain biking, I was glad to be pedaling! Snowbiking involves hard pedaling just stay upright at times. It builds strength rather than speed when the snow is still thick and hard to penetrate. Regardless, it's hard work so K and I stopped for a break at a view point.
We ran across tracks that I've never seen at this elevation. I believe that they are snowshoe hare tracks, based on the size of the hind paws. When a rabbit or hare 'hops' forward, the smaller front paws hit the ground first, one at a time. They're the lower tracks in the photo. Then, the larger hind paws synchronously reach ahead of the front paws, leaving the rabbit coiled for the next stride.
In these tracks, the hind paw prints exceeded 4" long and were quite wide, almost like snow shoes! These tracks are different from any Mountain Cottontail Tracks that I've seen before. For example, see the more classic cottontail tracks that I photographed recently with a bobcat's tracks close behind.

After K and I had played on our trails, I pedaled out on the roads solo. The theme for the day was that everything is melting, especially the layer of snow covering our dirt roads. I got covered in mud but didn't mind too much. I saw a few north-facing views that still looked like winter wonderlands.
From the bottom of a gulch, I could look up through a tangle of barren willows to see the mountains peeking at me.
Although other local mountain bikers declared that this storm was 'it', the storm that closed the trails to regular mountain bikes until May, I'm starting to think that they're wrong. The intense sun is melting the white carpet at a stunning rate. I suspect that the sun is still a little too high in the sky at mid-day to let the snow linger. Regardless, what an amazing world we live in. The snow today will make the flowers bloom in the spring!
I wonder what the slope where I captured that photo looks like right now. Arctic, I suspect.

Welcome winter!

Today marked a transition, from a grudging acknowledgement that winter is almost here to a happy welcome for its stunning beauty. The thermometer read 5°F as the sun rose in a fire of red and gold, transforming snow-laden pine trees into fiery-topped candles.

The dogs and I plunged into the crystal clear and frozen world. The azure sky highlighted the green pine boughs weighted down with snow pillows. The world seemed frozen into a stunning landscape. The scene felt like it might shatter, into a million tiny fragments, if we moved too fast or made too much noise.
As I fiddled with my camera to take some photos of the mountains, the dogs spontaneously sat next to each other. You probably have no idea what a rare event it is for R to decide to sit still while in the forest!
Cuter still, they turned to each other, and R gave K a kiss!
For new readers, you might be surprised to notice the electronic collars on both dogs. I use those collars for one very scary situation - when our coyote pack starts luring my dogs into a chase. Other dogs in our neighborhood who have fallen for this coyote trap have been seriously injured or killed.

I've worked very hard, using positive techniques, at training the duo not to chase coyotes, and I think that I may have succeeded. However, a few years ago, K came within a whisker of serious injury or death after chasing a lone coyote into a forest and emerging from the trees with a pack of coyotes behind her. I wrote a post about my soul-searching as I contemplated using these collars. I decided to use them because I felt that my dogs' lives were in danger, and I'd used every possible positive technique to train them to come when called around coyotes. I see the collars as a life-insurance policy - to be used only if my dog ignores my cues and is about to get in life-threatening trouble.

Indeed, yesterday afternoon, the dogs spotted coyotes in the meadow, went onto high alert, but they didn't chase. Based on that event and several others like it, I think that our positive training is working. However, because dogs have minds of their own, I can't be certain that they'll never fall for the coyote luring game again so my dogs wear the collars.

After photographing the dogs, I finally captured the crystalline mountains with K gazing at them.
After I dropped off my dogs at home, I headed out for a ride on our snow-packed roads, relying on my studded snow tires for traction. I headed down a gulch toward a favorite elk haunt and saw about half of the herd. Usually, they ignore me as I snap photos from a distance. But this herd vibrated with nervous energy and immediately started to amble slowly down the gulch - away from me. I took a little video that shows how the heard moves in a line, sometimes several elk abreast, but it's obvious that some elk are leaders and others are followers. My books say that the elder females usually lead but, in this case, the antlered males piloted the herd.



This half-herd included almost ten hulking males, one of whom outweighed the rest monumentally. I smiled, realizing that my antics on Saturday might have saved his life. Most hunters go for the biggest antlered male in the herd.

By serendipity, I caught a photo as he jumped a barbed wire fence used to corral a lone miniature horse who appears to enjoy the company of the elk.

Then, I started video recording the herd as they leaped over the fence one-by-one. Sorry about the jiggly video - I was working in a hurry. Notice how the smaller elk, probably yearlings who are just learning about fences, sometimes paused before jumping, perhaps apprehensive about the height of the fence.

Aside from the elk, I saw lots of tracks mostly from deer and coyotes. Surprisingly, a coyote trotted down our driveway but our wildlife cameras indicate that he didn't visit the birdfeeders. I'm starting to wonder if a nocturnal rodent, coyote prey, hangs out under our feeders in the summer but then hibernates in the winter. I'm not sure which rodent that might be. However, there's no doubt that the coyotes congregate under our birdfeeders almost every night all spring, summer, and fall. But now, they've stopped. I wonder why.

As I rolled home, happy and tired, I caught two more views of the glittering mountains. One was through a pine forest.

The other view rooted me in one spot, gazing with amazement. I finally tore myself away and headed home. Welcome winter!

Web of life

Yesterday afternoon, the promised snow started falling. The dogs worked together, perhaps each covering one end of a rodent tunnel as they dug deep into the earth paying no attention to the snow.
This morning, although loose and fluffy snow covered our trails, I reminded myself that I'll never know what's possible if I don't try. I tried to ride the untrampled trails with my Fatback. Alas, I rapidly realized that I'd be doing more walking than riding.
I turned around, stowed the bike, and took out my cross-country skis to start the trail packing process. I have a tried-and-true process for attaining packed trails in the winter. I start by skiing the established trails that most neighbors know. Then, everyone in the neighborhood walks and snowshoes in my ski tracks. I find it fascinating that most people only follow tracks but never forge their own path but that's a whole different topic - of a philosophical bent. The bottom line is that I end up with hard-packed trails for my Fatback snow bike.

Later, I secretly make ski tracks that don't follow established trails and are hidden from view. Those tracks remain pristine and awesome for gliding on my touring skis, just so long as no snowshoeing or hiking people find them.
Today, I started what should be an easy trail-packing process because the snow isn't too deep. I had fun breaking trail with my skis while the Labraduo played like a pair of puppies. Snow causes their playful streaks to bubble to the surface. R found a stick and K grabbed the other end. The pair moved synchronously as they bounded through the snow.
Leap upward for the next bound.
Fly through the air and land on the front limbs.
If only I could be as carefree and physically strong as the duo!

While I watched K and R play, a mountain chickadee called to me as if he had an important message. He fluttered toward me and landed close to my head on a pine branch. He seemed to look at me as he chirped. I think that this feathered messenger brought important advice. Be tough and resilient, just like he is.
Aside from bird chirps and squirrel tracks, I saw no signs of animal activity. No fresh tracks by deer, elk, bobcats, lions, foxes, coyotes, or rabbits. I wonder if they all hunkered down for the winter blast.
Today, with no conscious effort, I fell into the rhythm of being part of the forest rather than a visitor observing it. I felt like a part of the web of life despite the common belief that humans are somehow above nature's vicissitudes. Living among predators higher than me on the food chain and seeing evidence of their presence (like the lion tracks yesterday) helps foster that feeling. Moreover, the feeling is fostered by watching the animals and plants fight for survival just like we do every single day. The details of our daily battles are different but the indomitable spirit to live and flourish is the same.

Kia kaha.