Dead legs and pecking order

An inch of snow fell overnight. This morning, I found the most treacherous biking conditions so far this winter. Recent sunny days melted snow, and last night's frigid temperatures froze the trails solid. Then, the new snow provided the finishing touch, concealing the ice and making it even more slippery.














I rode my Stumpjumper rather than my Fatback when K and I headed out the door. The reason is that the Stumpjumper has studded tires - and they seemed critical for staying upright in today's precarious conditions. I gingerly rode up to a viewpoint where we saw two hiking neighbors who offered to take our photo.













After I dropped off K at home, I planned an easy ride on non-technical trails because of the ice. I saw the elk herd resting in a meadow with a mountain peak behind them. I took closeups of some animals and saw that the males still have their antlers. They won't drop their antlers until spring when their budding new antlers push off the old ones.

Females by far outnumber males in the herd, a normal state of affairs in a species that uses a harem mating system. In this system, the biggest and most dominant bulls each collect a group of 10-30 cows and actively defends them from mating with other bulls. The dominant bulls bugle, chase away other bulls, and even engage in antler combat. We've observed a herd broken up into a number of harems in vast meadow at Rocky Mountain National Park, and it's amazing to watch the jockeying by the big old bulls. The younger or less dominant bulls hang around the periphery trying to sneak in a mating when the dominant bulls are distracted.

In elk, equal numbers of males and females are born. But, more males die at the hands of hunters and due to winter mortality than females. Consequently, adult females outnumber males by 3 to 10-fold.

After passing the elk herd, I started to feel crummy - dead legs, stomach cramps, and a feeling that I'd prefer to be lying on the couch rather than pedaling my bike. To top it off, the snow had started to melt and my tires were churning grit onto my drivetrain - leading to serious chainsuck problems when I tried to use my small chainring.

I sat by the side of the trail to mentally regroup. I ate a peanutbutter cup and drank some water- following an ironclad rule for endurance exercise - when you feel exhausted, it's time to refuel. I gazed at the cobalt blue sky and pine trees. After soaking up some sun, I found the gumption to start the climb. I was forced to put my bike in the middle chainring due to the chainsuck problems. So, I pounded a much harder gear than usual on a long snowy climb. I felt the chocolate energy surge into my legs and realized that I'd probably be able to drag myself home. I chugged up the hill non-stop because, if I'd stopped pedaling, inertia might've sucked me down into a nap in the sun. Before I knew it, I was almost home.

I spent the afternoon by the fireplace. R and K entertained me with their play fighting. I was glad to see K relaxed enough to play with R. Recently, she's been 'correcting' him when he ignores her subtle signals that she doesn't want to play. Our pack seems to be in flux as R matures. R (1 yr old) has undoubtedly risen above S (13 yrs old) in the pack pecking order, and he now has K (5 yrs old) in his sights. We're trying to protect K from losing her new-found confidence while letting the pack find its natural order. For today, it looked like K and R simply played and had fun.

We ended the day by hiking down a northwest-facing gulch that's usually too snowy for hiking until June. Unbelievably, parts of it were bare of snow, making walking easy except for the blown-down trees strewn over the trail. Aside from some squirrels, it looked like we were the first to venture down the gulch since fall.

Who ate the money?

I started my day hiking with my trio of labs, including S, our 13 1/2 year old yellow lab. Usually, my husband hikes with S in the mornings and I hike with S in the evenings because S can't run or bike with us. I wrote previously about S's deafness and early signs of senility. The combination was making me nervous about losing him during off-leash hikes. We've started having S wear bear bells so that we notice immediately if he begins to wander off course. S usually insists on hiking directly behind us so we don't see him right away if he wanders. The bear bells have worked wonderfully.












We've also started giving S an anti-senility drug, Anipryl. Starting a couple of months ago, he was getting confused at trail intersections and wandering the wrong way. He also became confused, and paced nervously, if another of our dogs was sleeping on his favorite bed. Another senility sign was that S had accidents indoors when he forgot to wait until he was outside. All of these signs of confusion are becoming less frequent. It's been about 3 weeks since we started the drug, and we should see another week or two of improvement before things level off.

While we were hiking, I saw the oddest scat. Several different bills, a one dollar bill and others, were rolled together and encased in bobcat scat. The bills definitely came out of the cat with the scat - it wasn't a case of a bobcat pooping on some money that was lying there. I started wondering how a bobcat came to eat money. My best guess was that the money was part of something else that a bobcat would normally eat - because I can't imagine a bobcat eating bills by themselves. If it were lion scat, I might've worried that he killed and eaten a human along with the contents of the pants pockets - but bobcats don't kill humans. I did think of a gruesome scenario since a bobcat will feed on any dead meat it finds but I'll spare you the details.

We hiked through a forest of aspens and pine trees and were overwhelmed by a cocauphony of bird calls. A huge flock of mountain chickadees, pygmy nuthatches, white-breasted nuthatches, and pine siskins foraged in the trees. I've never before seen pine siskins flocking with with conifer-loving chickadees and nuthatches. I've read, however, that pine siskins like to eat the tender buds of deciduous trees. Perhaps they were eating the red buds on the aspen trees. Then, a short time later, a large flock of robins harshly squacked warning calls as we passed them. The early birds were active today.

After dropping the dogs off, I did a ride that included almost every kind of terrain. I started out by pedaling through a pine forest and saw a very fresh deer bone. It's from the end of the forelimb, a metacarpal bone with two carpal (toe) bones (the carpal bones attach to the hoof in an intact animal). As I traversed a slope, I caught a glimpse of the awesome Divide with blue sky around it.













A little later, I met a person who is involved in the ongoing Mountain Lion study. I told him about my sighting yesterday, and he wasn't at all surprised or concerned. He said that they've been seeing a lot of lion activity in the general area where I was.

After chatting with him for too long (mountain lion stories intrigue me), I rode a trail that passes through alien terrain that first feels like a high desert, then follows a mountain creek, and then finally returns to a Montane pine forest. Down in the canyon, water cascaded around ice-encased boulders in the creek.













After climbing out of the canyon and up from the creek, I was discouraged to find that the wind had picked up and shifted so it was hitting me directly in the face. I knew that I had a tough ride home ahead of me. I put my head down and spun patiently, feeling the strength of the endurance that I've been building this winter. I didn't feel like I was down to my last iota of energy toward the end of the ride. As I approached home, the sky surrounding the Divide was gray and angry in contrast to the deep blue sky when I left home.

As I took my last few pedal strokes, I spotted a pair of coyotes hunting in the meadow near our house. I've seen them almost daily over recent weeks. I think that they're a breeding pair and that our meadow will again be home to a family of coyotes in the summer. It'll be a challenge to keep our dogs away from them - but I don't mind - I love living among the wildlife.

Streaking apparition?

Today, R and K joined me for an early morning ride. I pedaled up to a summit to take some photos of the two of them, and I discovered that R dislikes looking straight at the camera. The left photo shows the closest that R came to looking at the camera, and the right photo shows a stress behavior. Flicking the tongue up toward the nose indicates that a dog is feeling stressed. I've taken innumerable photos of K (as you know), and she always gets treats afterwards. I need to start that habit with R so that he's comfortable with the eye of the camera focused on him.
















When R first met K, he flicked his tongue in the same way. I think that he was a tiny bit afraid of his seemingly huge sister.





Today, after taking photos on the peak, we headed down to a densely forested trail. Elk had churned up our smoothly packed path. Fortunately, I think that the elk themselves were already far away. But, the two dogs hummed with excitement. We did about ten recalls within a mile, as I repeatedly called the dogs back from exploring the elk scents. R is a 10,000 Volt dog. Today, R's frantic insanity was infectious, and K sprinted around madly with him.

When I headed out on my own, I tried to follow my lost wanderings from a few days ago to see if I could make the same trail connections again. To my surprise, I made it! And, today, I had my own Spot satellite messenger, which I can use to track my movements or to send a help signal with my GPS coordinates to 911. Cell phone coverage is spotty so this device gives me peace of mind when I wander to desolate areas.

As I descended a dense forest trail toward a creek in a gulch, I caught a glimpse of a tawny long form gliding across the trail below me. Tracks and scat had told me that many elk had passed through this area slightly earlier but the animal that I glimpsed did not move with the staccato gait of an elk. Rather, he floated across my path like a tan streak. I stopped, stayed stock still, listened, and watched. However, the animal seemed to have vanished without a sound. I worried that the apparition was a lion, and I considered turning around. I stood there in a quandary for a couple of minutes but my dangerous curiosity about the forest and its animals won. So, I cautiously descended to the gulch.

As I anxiously tried to watch my back, I rapidly searched for tracks. I found some extremely fresh tracks in deep crusty snow. These tracks were so fresh that the loose powdery snow kicked up by the animal still surrounded them despite the wind. I couldn't see any individual tracks clearly but the group of four prints was about 8 ft long. The track pattern is from a large animal using a rotary gallop moving from the top to the bottom of the photo.

Canines and felines use rotary gallops but elk and deer do not. Based on the very long stride and the large print size, I'm guessing that a mountain lion made these tracks.

I just realized that I forgot to look up in the trees while I scanned for the animal who streaked across my vision. While I looked at the tracks, I had a shiver of fear in my spine, like eyes were boring into my back. A cat in a tree might explain my disquiet. The feeling that I was being watched chased me out of the gulch without investigating further, unlike my recent careful perusal of lion tracks.

I've never found so many lion signs in a short time before now. However, today's situation fits together - there were definitely elk in the area, and lions like to eat elk. In past winters, I haven't wandered in the same places as the elk because the elk go to lower elevations when we have a normal amount of snow. And, I've never had a snow bike before. So, in contrast to recent winters, I'm frequenting the same routes as the elk, and therefore, the lions.

Once I was out in the open with the sun on my face, I felt safe. For the first time in days, the mountains peeked out from their cloud shroud. I noticed how beautiful the dry grass looked against the blue sky and deep green pines.












I love my mountain bike adventures in secluded patches of forest and seldom do I get truly scared, like I was today.

Sunrise and sunset

I headed out into the dark to enjoy a dawn bike ride. No animals greeted me. And, believe it or not, that disappointed me. One of my favorite things about dawn bike rides is seeing the forest creatures who are active under the cover of dawn and dusk.

The sun started to backlight the eastern horizon a good 10 minutes earlier than last week. I love knowing that our hours of sunlight are growing rapidly. Springtime is coming.















It won't be until late May that the aspen trees transform from bare skeletons to leafy trees but the buds seem to grow daily. Here, backlit by the rising sun, I imagine that I can see the buds.















Yes, springtime is definitely coming, and the robins are heralding its arrival. To my surprise, a flock of robins foraged close to the ground ahead of me after the sun was fully risen. They exploded into the air as I approached. They looked like flaming red birds as they alighted with their rust-colored breasts illuminated by the low sun. I don't see them in our forests during the depths of winter. But, they delight me by appearing for the end of winter every year. In the cold of winter when no tasty bugs are available, they primarily eat berries from the juniper shrubs that carpet our forest floor.Although I didn't see many mammals today, I saw their tracks deep in a conifer forest. One set caught my eye because the gait pattern and stride length are similar to the ones that I posted two days ago, although I saw them about 5 miles from the previous site on the edge of a pine forest. Today's tracks were from an animal moving quickly up a steep hill in loose deep snow. The prints themselves were not clear but were about 1-2" long per paw. Based on my research, I'm becoming more convinced that these are American Marten (AKA 'Pine Marten') tracks based on paw size and the gait pattern. However, I'm having trouble finding out about the prevalence of martens in my area.






















A Pine Marten is a small mostly carnivorous mammal that's part of the weasel family. It weighs about 3 lbs but has big paws for its size as you can see in the photo. Martens eat mostly rodents but also some berries. They're secretive animals who live in pine forests. They've been trapped for their fur for many years.

Shortly after riding this morning, I drove down 3000' to town. For every 1000' lower in elevation, spring arrives 10 days sooner. So, over the course of a short drive, I traveled forward in time by about 30 days. This 'time travel' had become more dramatic over the past week as the aspens, cottonwoods, and willows were showing signs of spring life in the warmth of lower elevations.

All the snow biking that I'm doing this winter, like this morning, is making me a strong rider with good endurance. However, many rides don't provide a sustained high intensity cardiovascular workout. To remedy this, I've been designating part my weekly dawn ride as a higher intensity workout. Specifically, over the course of a 35 minute climb with little snow, I do 2 minutes at moderately high intensity at a fast cadence and 1 minute relaxed. I repeat this cycle for the whole climb. It seems to give my legs some 'snap' - a reminder that that they can pedal at a faster pace than the slow slog that snow biking often is. It's a workout that I did when I was a bike racer because it mimics the surges and decelerations of racing on big climbs. I don't race anymore but I still like to push my physical limits sometimes.

To provide a bookend to the day, the dogs and I went for a sunset stroll. I was tired after a long day but enjoyed the pink sunset and the company of my three labradors.

Global weirding

I heard Thomas Friedman speak last night, and the following paragraph that he read from his book was powerful: "Later" was a luxury for previous generations, eras, civilizations, and epochs. It meant that you could paint the same landscape, see the same animals, eat the same fruit, climb the same trees, fish the same rivers, enjoy the same weather or rescue the same endangered species that you did when you were a kid - but just do it later, whenever you got around to it. Nature's bounty seemed infinite and all the threats to it either limited or reversible. In the Energy-Climate Era, given the accelerating rates of extinction and development, "later" is going to be removed from the dictionary. "Later" is no longer when you get to do all those things in nature you did as a kid - on your time schedule. "Later" is when they're gone - when you won't get to do any of them ever again. "Later" is too late - so whatever we are going to save, we'd better start saving now. From Flat, Hot, and Crowded, by Thomas L. Friedman.

Friedman is an inspiring speaker who makes a convincing argument that we need to take action now to stop global warming (or 'global weirding' as he likes to say). Being out in nature, observing the animals and plants of the forest, is when I'm happiest, so his words struck fear into my heart.

As we fled the city last night, I enjoyed leaving behind its light pollution. I gazed out to the west and saw a huge mountain range with no electrical lights marring the view. When we arrived home, the stars glittered against the pitch black sky.

The wind howled this morning, making me think that we should have a wind turbine to supplement our solar power, especially on a day like today that dawned gray.


For our ride today, I strongly wanted to avoid going near any roads - because I'm sick of roads and because the wind hits me harder when I'm out of the forest.



So, I set out determined to use the powers of the Fatback to stay on snowy trails for the entire ride. As I'm getting used to my Fatback, I'm becoming a more aggressive pilot at the helm. Today, I rode over and through snow drifts and managed to avoid walking even on forested north-facing slopes. I was awed by the powers of the Fatback - it can go over or through almost anything.


K and I made it to another trail network and another world opened to us. K seemed overjoyed to be exploring territory that she hasn't visited in months. She zipped around like a high-octane puppy and joyfully leaped over all of the downed trees.






















By the end of the ride, the Divide briefly peeked out from the clouds to the west and blue sky emerged to the east.













We didn't see many animals today but we did see a plethora of trees infested with the Pine Beetle - a destructive insect whose population is exploding thanks to the lack of bitterly cold winter temperatures - reminding me that 'later' will be too late to stop global weirding.

A dog's enthusiasm

A new knife-like pain started in my back yesterday afternoon and continued stabbing me this morning. The pain made me feel lethargic but K's enthusiasm pulled me out the door. And, what a day it was! K led me up a snowy trail through an aspen grove, and then melted my heart with her eyes.




















As I looked into K's eyes, I heard some creaking from above us. I looked up and the gusty wind had almost blown down a tree that was leaning in our direction. We hurried along the trail and came upon a funny sight - the bone that we'd examined so closely last week now adorned a tree. My husband put it in the tree because R had been gnawing on it daily during their morning runs.




















After K had jump-started my day, I decided to 'explore' to find a new route up to a ridge. I wandered around in the pine forest trying to keep my bearings. I was born with no sense of direction. If I can see landmarks, I can figure out where I am but when I'm in the midst of tall trees, forget it. Sometimes when I have a GPS, I test myself and try to point toward home. I'm often 180 degrees wrong.

Today, I ended up on trails that are new to me - which is amazing because I hadn't wandered far from home. At one point, the trail steeply dropped down into a gulch over loose rocky terrain. I usually decide whether to ride or walk a tricky trail partly based on whether anyone knows where I am (so I can be found if I crash). Today, I thought to myself, "No one knows where I am. Even I don't know where I am.". For some reason, that thought made me giggle and I decided to walk the tricky descent.

I eventually found myself, and the Fatback amazed me as it rolled up a steep, slippery, snowy, rocky, and rooty climb. I emerged above the trees with only the deep blue sky overhead not too far from my planned destination. I guess I wasn't as lost as I thought that I was.
















I saw a couple of track patterns that puzzled me. In both cases, the recent blowing snow had obscured the details of each paw print so we have only the gait patterns as clues.

In the first one (left photo), the paws left indents a little smaller than bobcat paws but the gait pattern isn't typical for a bobcat. The strides were a little less than a foot apart. My best guess so far is that a pine marten left these tracks but I've never seen a marten at our elevation - the closest one that I've seen was about 1000' higher than here.













In the second track (right), the paws looked like they were around coyote size but I couldn't see any details. The strides were about a foot apart. I've never seen this gait pattern around here before. Does anyone have any idea what animal might have made it?