In the company of dogs

I had the honor of two canine escorts, K and R, for the start of my ride. After riding for only a short time, both dogs simultaneously threw the switch from 'happy-go-lucky' galloping to serious pursuit galloping. Through an aspen grove, I spotted six tan mule deer rumps, bouncing away but not terribly quickly. I recalled both dogs - this is no big deal for the more mature K - but fleeing deer or elk are still a tempting challenge to R. I watched the dogs closely, and R hesitated to check whether K whipped around to return to me. Only when he saw K turn did he start his sprint to me. It emphasized how much an older dog teaches a younger dog. If K had chased those deer, I have no doubt that R would've joined the fun. I gave them a huge jackpot of treats for resisting the temptation of an exciting chase and returning to the comparatively boring me.

I took the opportunity to practice stays and recalls while the dogs felt the adrenaline of a chase in their blood and smelled the scent of deer in the air. I've come to believe that these spontaneous training sessions when deer or elk are nearby have played a key role in making K reliable around them. The dogs love practicing recalls and sprint at top speed!



















As we headed up to the exposed ridges and peaks above my house, I had my first mechanical mishap. Somehow, I don't know how, a stick caught in my spokes and nearly sent me over the handlebars. Believe it or not, this unlikely accident happened again in the next 10 minutes. Fortunately, both times, my speed was slow, and I managed to avoid an endo.

As we rode up to our favorite peak, I was shocked to see the tracks of other mountain bikers. Over the winter, I've been the only one on most trails! I welcome most of them back because they're friends who I like to see - but I have to admit that I love the solitude of the trails in the winter.

After a rocky climb, we emerged above the trees to a view that'll never stop taking my breath away. I felt like hanging out in the sun on the peak so K and I played a favorite game - I hide an object while she sits out of sight. Then, she has to find it and bring it to me. Today, I caught her peeking around a tree while I hid a handwarmer- a very cute moment. I wish that my camera had been handy. But I could tell that she used her nose rather than her memory to find the handwarmer because she didn't zero in on it until she was downwind of it. You can see her picking it up below.













This 'Find it' game is useful. I tend to do all sorts of tasks while riding my bike - I take gloves on and off, remove wrappers from food, hand out treats to K, and even take pictures. And, I regularly drop things while multi-tasking. I send K back on the trail with a 'Find it' cue, and she brings me the lost item. It seems to be my scent that she seeks because she brings me any object that I've touched.

After dropping the dogs off at home, I started enjoying rolling downhill faster than I do when I'm with the dogs. As I descended a rocky steep hill, I was getting in the zone when I felt that mushy flat-tire feeling - I guess it was my mechanical bad luck day. At least it happened in the sun! While I changed the tire, I felt creepy, like eyes were boring into my back, and I kept glancing nervously over my shoulder. I was on a rarely-used boulder-strewn descent down to a creek. A lion could've easily taken me as I focused on my tire. When K is with me, she watches my back if I'm distracted. I was wishing for her! I think lions were on my mind because a fellow local mountain biker found dog remains and a collar in a spot that was obviously a lion's lair yesterday.













As I picked up my repaired bike to continue descending, I noticed that my handlebar had rested on a lichen-covered rock (above right). I felt bad - as I've recently learned that lichens grow only 0.5 mm per year (Watcher's blog) - I hope that I didn't hurt any lichens. Based on the size of the lichen patches, I'm guessing the largest ones might've been almost 100 years old!

Just a little further down this slope, a 30 ft high cliff-face caught my eye. I'd never seen anything like the lichens growing all over it (at least I think they're lichens - maybe someone could give a more informed opinion). The top of the cliff leaned outward, shading the lower face that held large patches of these beautiful whitish lichens. My index fingertip is for scale.

I rolled along a ridge with the wind whipping me from the west. The trail has dried out in the sun and wind of the past week. But, the views kept peeking from between the trees as I rode to the west. It's tough to focus on the rocky trail when the surroundings are gorgeous!





















I kept watching for the cinnamon colored mama bear and her two cubs on this ridge. They roamed it last summer, and this is prime weather for them to wake up for a stroll. I thought that I saw two bear tracks on the sandy trail - but the tracks were too unclear to be sure. I always look forward to seeing my first bears of spring but it's probably too early for them.

Before descending from the ridge, I took one more photo of the mountains.I wound down the day with a sunset hike with the trio of labradors. Our sunset hikes have recently been shortened due to S's sore joints. He gets gimpy whenever the cushioning snow melts - both last year and this year. Even though the hikes are shorter, we still enjoy them!

Bluebird at sunrise

I rolled out on my mountain bike just as the day dawned. To the east, an orange light glowed from below the horizon. While I rode to a rocky outpost, the sun rose above the horizon and burned from behind the clouds. When I turned to the west, I saw a stippled sky with a distant mountain.
A short time later, I saw stunningly beautiful snowy mountains reflecting the rosy hue of the sunrise.












As I gazed at the sky and mountains, I saw a bright blue bird that fluttered past me and landed on a fencepost. I rubbed my eyes in disbelief - it was the first mountain bluebird of the season! He's a forerunner for the hordes of male bluebirds who'll be scouting out their meadow territories in the coming month. When I saw him, the rising sun was still too low in the sky to fully brighten the valley so the photograph is blurry - but it truly shows a bluebird! I checked my journal, and I first saw the first bluebird on March 7 last year so today's sighting is only a few days earlier.


Seeing a spring bird capped off a dazzling dawn ride.

Mountain magnetism

The robins are singing from the treetops, and it's still warm enough to be spring. K and I rolled through the forest of bare aspens, needle-covered pines, and dwarf juniper this morning to hear the familiar music of the huge flock of birds. Today, we saw two new species with the group: Northern Flickers and Juncos. Whenever we see this flock, they're in a mixed forest that must have a wide variety of foods to attract this diverse bunch.

Although the temperature is springlike, the winds are winterlike. K and I climbed up to the highest local peak, and the wind nearly blew me off my bike. I walked the last 30 yards, and then lay down my bike because there was no hope of propping it upright without having it blown over. K sat next to the bike and looked scared. She hates the wind - as a puppy, she'd try to flee from it.


Today, K and I didn't stay on the exposed peak for long. I snapped some photos of the snowy mountains but had trouble focusing the camera because the wind gusts buffeted me. Then, we dropped down to a forested west-facing trail, and caught a peek of the same view that I'd just photographed from the peek. I took the photo on the left about 25 minutes earlier than the one on the right. Over that short time, the cloud cluster over the mountains grew astronomically.















This morning, I kept up a good pace on the forested trail because the scents had amped up K to high voltage levels. While we wound along the ledgy trail, she repeatedly sprinted ahead until she was just barely in view and waited impatiently. Occasionally, she zoomed up the wall-like steep slope to the east of the trail. I suspect her excitement stemmed from a recent visit by the elk herd based on the trampling, tracks, and scat along the trail.

The warm sun has melted much of the snow from the trails. By riding trails with less ice, I'm finding out that riding snow and ice daily has given me more confidence on the descents. I loved climbing from day one but I've always been tentative on downhills. Now, that's accentuated by the dire warnings of doctors about my unstable neck vertebrae. But, riding tentatively is the most direct path to crashing so it felt great to flow down technical downhills today. When my riding friends emerge from hibernation, I'm sure that we'll resume our usual pattern of them dropping me on the downhills and me catching up on the climbs. Until then, I'll keep the illusion alive that I'm an improved downhiller.

In fact, because of my observation that I crash most often when I'm riding tentatively, I've made a 'no bailing out' rule. Once I start a downhill, I don't allow myself to try to bail out partway down. It's amazing how much more smoothly and safely I descend since I made this rule. Another side-effect is that my crashes are more spectacular - that can be good or bad, depending on your viewpoint. Continuously descending the hill shown in the photo has been a goal over the past year. Near the top, I weave in and out of large boulders and tree roots. Closer to the bottom, I try not to skid on loose sharp rocks. Although it scares me every single time I face it, I love taking it on. And, I checked - my Spot tracker can send messages from this steep spot so I can summon help if needed.

When I headed out on my own, I stayed low and away from the howling wind. Down in the protected areas, the sun rapidly overheated me and butterflies flitted past. Out of the wind, it felt like spring. I noticed buds on some small trees bordering a creek. The right photo shows the small tree/shrub with the reddish tinge on the branch ends. I think that it's a willow tree but I'm not sure. This year, I feel like I've suddenly woken up on an alien planet because I'm noticing so many new things in the forest. I'll figure out what tree it is when its leaves emerge - it's too difficult to identify with naked branches.

I rode out onto a high plateau, mostly east facing, so it wasn't exposed to the gusty west wind. When I looked to the east, I saw the typical dry rocky hills overlooking a reservoir - very pretty in its own way. I looked over my shoulder and caught the snowy mountains peeking over a parched hillside. I felt like I stood on the knife's edge between two drastically different worlds. I decided to ride westward toward the snowy mountains.












I'm a mountain girl, through and through. The mountains pull me toward them.

Planned slaughter of endangered wolves

Check out this article that I saw on Ralph Maughan's Wildlife News page. It's appalling that they hope to kill so many wolves - an endangered species, the last time I checked.

Exploring the springlike world

I'm writing this blog while sitting on my deck - which is completely crazy for March 2. The dogs insisted that we venture outside for the afternoon. All three love hanging out on the deck, and they knew that it was warm enough for it. They told me by standing by the deck door and pointedly staring alternately at me and at the door. I was going by the calender, which says it's too early for deck lounging. But the dogs were right!

We used to let the dogs have access to the deck almost all the time in warm weather - it's a high deck with no access stairs from outdoors so it seemed safe to us. Then, a neighbor had an Australian Shepherd snatched off her deck by a lion. She actually saw the lion leaping from the high deck with the dog in its jaws. Since that wake-up call, we only allow the dogs on the deck when we're with them. We have a mutual protection pact.

Today, I had heavy legs and felt like I was dragging an anchor due to my inspired mountain bike ride yesterday so it was a good day to 'explore' rather than ride hard. K and I took a new route. It crosses an expansive meadow with views of the snowy mountains. The grass is golden (or, you might say, brown) now but this meadow will have a riot of wildflowers in a couple of months - assuming that we get some moisture between now and then.












While we were in the meadow, K adopted a classic coyote pose, standing statue-still with one paw raised and seemingly pointing at a rodent. She paused in this posture and was completely absorbed in something that I couldn't see. A coyote researcher (Hope Ryder) spent 2 complete years observing coyote behavior in Wyoming, and she saw a coyote hold this position for 11 minutes, waiting for the perfect instant to pounce on its quarry, a mouse. By contrast, a high energy and distractable dog like K rarely holds still for more than a handful of seconds when outdoors. However, like her coyote cousins, she's recently become obsessed with digging in the meadow - I assume that she's excavating rodent holes. R likes to hover nearby - again, this is a behavior that Ryder has observed in coyotes. Often, the rodent has more than one exit to its burrow, and a second coyote is on guard to pounce if the rodent flees through the other hole. Perhaps, that's what R is doing! The good news is that neither of them has ever even come close to catching a rodent.












I'd been planning to try today's route for a while - but I'd been waiting for a weekday when the area would be deserted so that I could poke around to find the boundary lines between public and private land. As I was carefully weaving along a ridge above the meadow, I saw a sign that said 'National Forest Land Behind this Sign'. Well, I was on the wrong side of the sign - and just at that moment, a stocking capped head popped up from a cluster of boulders. But, it was a friendly guy who shouted that he was holding onto his dog. I interpreted that to meant that his dog was aggressive so I told K to 'heel', and we popped over to the 'correct' side of the sign. However, even these signs aren't good guideposts because a lot of the non-National Forest land is owned by the county, and they rarely have boundary signs. So, I'm often baffled about whose land I'm on.

Colorado state law says that recreational users are responsible for knowing whether they're on private or public land. In other words, land owners don't have to post signs to prosecute for trespassing. It's really difficult to know exactly where you are relative to invisible 'property' lines on the earth. The trees, flowers, rocks, and animals all look the same on both sides of a private property line. Most people are reasonable and even accommodating - I have permission from many of them to ride across their land. But, a few very territorial types are rumored to chase out trespassers with guns. Many years ago, one of my dogs was murdered by a drunk guy with a gun while I was hiking - the guy was convicted of a felony for his actions - but it's left me paranoid about taking K anywhere near the rumored gun-toters.

Today, as I rolled through the forest and meadows, I couldn't ignore that it felt like springtime. The warm sun inspired me to ride in shorts - exposing my very untan legs to sun for the first time in months. I saw a small butterfly that fluttered past me too fast to identify him. Then, I saw several flies buzzing around in the sun - not a notable event in summertime - but definitely an oddity in wintertime.

Later, as I descended a dark, densely forested, and northfacing slope, I saw two Gray Jays foraging in the pine forest. They're occasional visitors to our elevation in the winter but they mostly live up higher in the mountains. Surprisingly, they don't extract seeds from pine cones, although they'll eat spruce seeds from the ground. They mainly subsist on animals (carrion and they prey on mice and birds), bugs, berries, and fungi. Last summer, I saw a Gray Jay eating Amanita muscaria, a hallucinogenic poisonous mushroom, and I assumed that the he was doomed. But, I just read that Gray Jays can eat these bright red eye-catching mushrooms with no harm. To save some food to eat later or over the winter, Gray Jays use their exceptionally sticky saliva to adhere food to trees.

Today, I tried to photograph the pair of Gray Jays but only managed to capture a photo as one flew out of the frame. They didn't seem afraid of me but they were in a flurry of motion flitting from one perch to the next- as if they were trying to make the most of this springlike day. I'm not sure what food they were seeking since they were in a dense mostly pine forest - perhaps they eat the berries from the dwarf juniper that sparsely covered the forest floor. After the Jays had flitted out of sight, I descended to the gulch where I saw a mountain lion a little more than a week ago - and the creek that runs through it was melting fast. The sheen of water on top of the ice gleamed in the sun and reflected the forest.












After a an easy ride of exploring, I rolled onto my property to find that the insomniac Golden Mantled Ground Squirrel was up and eating again. In the photo, he's courageously poking his head out of his hole to check me out. He's stuffed seeds into his mouth so that his cheeks and gullet look grotesquely swollen. Those seeds will give him midnight snacks for the next few months - he doesn't seem to sleep very soundly! His brethren won't appear above ground until May. Imagine sleeping deeply for more than half the year like a normal Golden Mantled Ground squirrel does - maybe the insomniac can't stand to miss out on so much of the year. That's how I'd feel!

Mountain beauty

This morning, the sky looked like abstract art with a combination of oranges, grays, blues, purples, and whites.Happiness fueled me to ride hard up the hills with K floating next to me in her buttery smooth galloping stride. As we tunneled through a maze of aspen and ponderosa pine trees, a shockingly loud cacophony of bird calls surrounded us. I scanned to find the singers, and birds flitted from twig to twig in every tree. An amazing mixture of birds flocked together: Hairy woodpeckers, Stellar's jays, robins, mountain chickadees, pygmy nuthatches, white breasted nuthatches, and pine siskins. The flock was perhaps the biggest and most diverse of any winter flock that I've seen around here. Their calls seemed to emanate from everywhere around us.












After lingering to enjoy the birds, K and I headed up high. I snapped a zillion photos because every little detail seemed so beautiful. I enjoyed a peek at a distant snow-encased mountain through aspen branches. Then, I noticed the intricate beauty of the lichens coating the rocks that have recently emerged from the snow.













After I left K to snooze at home, I headed out for what I hoped would be a fast and hard ride. I felt infused with excited energy from the beauty around me and felt like riding fast. The first part of my ride mostly descended, all the way to the water's edge. Then, I had a long climb home, and I had fun playing tempo games as I danced up the endless climb. I did a pattern of a 1 minute surge and then 1 minute at my normal climbing pace. It was fun, feeling that the raw power that my legs could produce. I love climbing, probably because my body is built for it. I'm small and light, and I enjoy finding my physiological limits. That combination makes climbing a blast.

I climbed for about 40 minutes, with only a few false flats or slight downhills interspersed in the upward march. The hardest part was that I'd made an edict that I wasn't stopping to take any photos. I kept seeing photos waiting to be taken, but didn't break my rule. Finally, at the top, I could no longer resist the beauty of the sky, the mountains, and the trees.












Today was a day of thankfulness for living in such a beautiful and wild place surrounded by animals, forests, and mountains.