Scouting for Mountain Goats

Back from my first real scouting trip on my goat tag.  

Main goal was to cover ground and get a feel for the different parts of the unit and I succeeded in that.  Still a little worried as I didn't see many goats where everyone tells me where they will be during hunting season, but I did find some when I went up higher where there was still some snow.

Got stuck in about an hour long Bisonjam driving through Lamar Valley getting over to the unit from where I was staying in Montana.

Glassed a lot of cliffs.  The first evening I saw a nanny and kid at about 50 yards on my side of the canyon and that was it.  The next morning I saw a lone goat about 2 miles down the canyon about smack dab in the middle of the cliff.  You can click on any of the pictures to see a larger image, the panoramic pictures are pretty small if you don't click on them.

Ran the Morrison Jeep trail later that morning and afternoon from the top side and saw about 30 head of elk up on top, but no goats.  Some really pretty country though.  This is the drainage that ends up in Deep Lake. 

It looked pretty rough to try to drop down into from the top.  There is a trail that goes up to it from the bottom that will be an option later in my hunt if we aren't seeing anything in the other spots.

I was told this was a cellular antenna, but there is no power coming to it and those don't look like any solar panels I've ever seen.  Not sure what it is but it is up in the middle of nowhere.

On one of the cliffs I was looking at there was a box on a shelf.  Another perplexing thing to me.  Not sure how you would get to the box without full blown repelling gear.  The cliff goes another 300 - 400 feet down under the box too.  There was some type of box inside on the upper right corner as well but I couldn't get a good enough picture to show it.

After abandoning all the spots I had been told to check out, I just drove the Beartooth Highway stopping on all the pull outs and glassing for goats.  Found this group of 9 nannies.  I thought I counted 10 when I was watching them, but all the pictures just have 9 goats in them.  These were about 1/2 mile away.

There was a lone goat hanging out about 2 miles away on this cliff right in the center of the picture where the reddish rock is, but he got up and started moving when I was taking pictures.  He's (I think it was a billy) the bright white spot moving into the pines about 1/3rd of the way to the left of the screen in this picture.  

I tried using a fancy digiscoping setup I bought a few years ago but gave up on it and was just free handing taking pictures with my iPhone through the scope.  I'm either going to rig up a cheap adapter with a measuring cup for my iPhone or break down and buy one of the PhoneScope setups off camofire.

This picture has both of the above pictures in it.  The nannies were on the closest ridge that runs perpendicular in this picture, the lone goat was on the next ridge that runs parallel in this picture.  The mountains in the background are in Montana.

Over the course of 2 1/2 days I saw more elk than goats by a wide margin.  Took this picture through my binoculars of some elk sunning themselves on a sand bar on the river.

Almost ran over this band of bighorn ewes running to the Morrison Jeep Trail switchbacks on the last day of scouting.  There were a few more higher up the canyon, but no rams that I could see.

Pictures never do hills justice, but this is looking up the switchbacks of the Morrison Jeep Trail going up to the Dillworth Bench.  I think there are 21 switchbacks to get to the bench. 

This is about 3/4 of the way up looking back down the switchbacks.

This is at the top looking down the last switchback.  

I had been warned to bring a spare tire and thankfully at least had a compressor and some plugs.  Ended up with a cut in the rear tire of one of the ATVs that took 5 plugs to fill.  Somehow it ended up holding until we got back out thankfully!

This is up on the bench looking to the west.

Another shot looking west.

My definition of what is steep and what isn't has been completely turned on it's head.  Grades that I would have never even considered previously are now places where I'm telling myself, "that looks like a good spot if I needed to get up or down that area".  I'm also going to try to contact some mountaineering type folks to inquire about recovery options if I end up with a goat down in a spot that is not retrievable for me.  Every time I looked over an area I kept asking myself, could I pull the trigger on a goat if it was there?  What about there?

Overall I felt like it was a successful trip.  Met one local that gave me some really good information that matched up with what one of the guys I had talked to that had the tag a couple years ago told me.  Covered a lot of ground and feel like I know my way around the unit a little bit at least.  Was somewhat disappointed that I didn't see more goats and any big billies or anything, but from what I've been told they will probably not be in the same spot in 2 months anyway.

This is definitely a different type of hunting than anything I've done before.  I swing back and forth between thinking it should be a slam dunk to thinking that there is no way I'm going to fill my tag.  Still hoping that with 9 days to hunt that I'll be able to find a nice mature billy in a spot that I can shoot it and recover it.

Still would welcome any suggestions or input.

Thanks, Nathan

Knowles Peak

What better way to spend your 21st anniversary than starting a hike with your wife and child and then abandoning them halfway through the hike to do some off trail mountaineering with your niece?  That's what I did for my anniversary and it was a really neat day.

Here we are toward the start of the hike.  We went with my brother and his wife and their two daughters for the start of the hike.

Looking back from where we started that morning.  This is looking toward where we were on the ATV trails earlier in the week.  If you click on it and look closely you can see some of the logging roads we were riding on.

A little over a mile and a half and we were at the meadow having gained a little over 1,300' of elevation.  We had just kept a steady easy pace and everyone seemed to be really enjoying the hike.

We had discussed everything from everyone going on a 3 mile one way hike where we could meet up with another trail head to doing a round trip hike and another option was to leave the trail behind and head up to Knowles Peak since we were already on the backside of the mountain.  With 7 of us eating lunch in the meadow we ended up deciding to do all 3 options.  My brother and his wife decided to do the round trip hike, one of my nieces wanted to go up to Knowles Peak so I volunteered to take her up there, and my wife and son and the other niece decided to just hike down to the trail head and head back to camp.  Here we are eating lunch in a meadow before we split up.

Once we split up the climbing began.  The only drawback to this route to going up to Knowles Peak is that you have to do some ups and downs going across the ridge line.  I've hiked this route a few times in the past and their is a neat rock cairn that someone stacked up along the ridge line.  Here's a picture of my niece next to it.

You can see the peak that we are headed to over her left shoulder.  Doesn't look like much of a climb, but there are a few steep spots between where the picture was taken and the peak.

A little bit of effort and about 1,000' of elevation gain from where we ate lunch and we were on the top.  I propped up the camera on my backpack and got a picture of us using the timer.

Here's a panoramic view from the top.

We had decided that we would just head down the front side of the mountain and head back toward camp instead of going back the way we had come so off the top we went.  The next mile was the slowest mile logged per my GPS with it taking us over an hour and fifteen minutes.  Of course we dropped 1,859' during that mile with all of it off trail so I guess that's our excuse.

As we got toward the bottom I couldn't remember exactly when I had dropped off the ridge in the past, but remembered having cliff problems at least one of the times I came down.  I ended up sending us off the ridge a little early and we had to come down some pretty steep stuff with lots of loose rocks for about the last 1/2 mile or so.  Right at the bottom we had to do some pretty good maneuvering to avoid getting cliffed out.  I really didn't want to have to climb up the very steep loose rock and dirt we had been coming down, and I was able to find a way down.

Here is my niece coming down the last bit.  As always the camera seems to make it look not nearly as steep, but we had to do lots of side hilling back and forth and several times we were standing up with one hand hanging onto the side of the mountain.  The cliff at the top of the picture is where we started this little descent.

One unexpected part of the hike was that I found a couple shed antlers and one of them was a pretty nice one from this year.  I let my niece carry it on the way down and for some reason she thought that meant it was hers!  After much consideration on my part and promises from her that she would cherish it and not just throw it in her closet or something I let her keep it.  Here's my backpack back at camp with the sheds.

Overall it was a very nice hike and fun to get to share some of it with my niece.  She did a little complaining about my choice of routes down the mountain but overall was a trooper.

Elbow Lake

After going to Yellowstone Bible Camp for close to 40 years now, last year was the first time I made the hike up to Elbow Lake that is just a 3 mile drive from camp to the trail head.  I've gone on several other hikes from the same trail head, and even seen the sign for Elbow Lake before, but no one I knew had ever gone there so I never bothered to even check it out.

Last year my friend Ben did some checking around for new areas to hike to and thought Elbow Lake would be a good alternative to some of our normal hikes when we are at camp.  The only drawback is that it a bit long for a day hike at 8 miles each way with some decent elevation gain going up to the lake.  We decided it would be worth it and went for it last August and were rewarded with a beautiful lake that we had pretty much to ourselves.  We only passed one other person on the trail going to and from the lake that day.  Here's a panoramic picture that I took that day last August.  You can click on the picture to enlarge it.

Fast forward to last week and I had mentioned to several of my family members what a pretty lake it was and that although it was a hard hike, it could be done in a day if you didn't mess around.  The thing I didn't really take into account was the fact that most of my family are not avid hikers and that the conditions would be very different in mid June than they were the first of August the year before.  The snowpack was much higher this year than last year and we were almost a month and a half earlier this year as well.  My family didn't have decent boots or backpacks, they were just planning on hiking in tennis shoes and book bag type day packs.  I was worried about it being a bit muddy with the rain that had been coming through the last few days and I was worried about a few stream crossings, but I told them to be sure and pack some dry socks and figured we would be fine.

The first 6 1/2 miles of the hike were pretty uneventful.  It is a pretty steady climb starting at mile 3 through 6, then you drop down a bit during mile 7 before climbing back again.  About a mile from the lake we started hitting the first patches of snow.

Nothing too bad.  For the most part you could skirt around the larger patches if you wanted to and I went through first and made some boot tracks for people to follow if they wanted to.

After another 1/2 mile or so it got pretty bad and the 3 of the 7 that started the hike decided that it wasn't going to be worth it to end up with your shoes and socks soaking wet 7 miles from the trail head so they decided to turn back.  The trail was now pretty much completely covered with snow at least 12" deep and MUCH deeper in spots.  Here's a view of the trail with about 3/4 of a mile to go before you get to the lake.  Really nice little bridge over a small creek.  Of course the snow was covering nearly all of the bridge.

At about 1/2 mile to go to the lake all except for 2 of us decided it wasn't going to be worth it to plow through the snow to get to the lake.  Amazingly the 2 of us that decided to continue on were the ones wearing hiking boots and not tennis shoes.  The snow stayed pretty steady and in many spots was firm enough that you could walk on top of the crust, but occasionally you would break through sometimes as deep as your crotch.  I was really wanting to make it to the lake to see how different it would look with all the snow.  The images I was seeing made me think it was going to be worth it.

It was!

Quite a bit different that what it looked like last August.  Even with all the snow we had to go through to get there I was surprised to see the ice still on the lake.

Token picture of me at the lake in the snow.

I changed my socks out on the way back down, but even with my waterproof hiking boots they were pretty wet on the inside.  You can make some pretty good time on the way back to the trail head though as it is nearly all downhill.

One neat part of the hike is a very large meadow that you hike through.  One of the largest mountain meadows that I know of anyway.

It was so green up there this year.  This meadow is very steep, the trail switchbacks 3 times going through it.

Some neat cliffs on the way back down.

A very neat hike and well worth the effort.  Per my GPS it showed almost exactly 16 miles roundtrip (15.98 miles) and 3,829' of elevation gain.  You only gain 2,900' or so of net elevation going from the trail head to the lake, but you end up giving up a couple hundred feet really early in the hike and then about 600' at about the 6 mile mark so the true gain ends up more than the net.

If the lake isn't frozen over you could probably catch some fish up there as we saw some nice trout in the water when we were there last August.

Just a couple more posts to go and I'll be caught up.

Snowbank Campground ATV Trail Ride

Earlier in the week I was able to spend an afternoon riding our 4 wheelers with my sister-in-law Kerry riding with me and my brother Darwin riding the other ATV with my niece Erin on the back of it.  We ran up a couple miles from camp and hit the Snowbank Campground ATV trail that is about a 20 mile loop through a big chunk of country that has been logged and then burned.  With all the snow and rain this year it was as green as I can remember.

Barely a mile into the ride we spotted a nice bear feeding in the grass.  I thought it was a brown colored black bear, but my brother Darwin thought it was a young grizzly bear.  We watched it for a few minutes and it took off when it saw us.  Picture quality isn't that great as it was taken zoomed in on my iPhone, but you can get the general idea.

It was a pretty dreary day with rain off and on for pretty much the entire ride.  The flowers were just starting to bloom and we saw deer, elk, rabbits, grouse and the one bear.  It is a very pretty ride.

Most of the trail is on old logging roads, but there is a mile or two back in the very back that is a new ATV trail that connects the 2 main logged areas.  It doesn't look like it in the picture and even while you are riding them it doesn't look that bad, but there is a little over a 1/2 mile of trail where it constantly feels like you are about to tip over on your side.    Here's a picture of my brother in one of these spots.  If you look close you can see he is actually holding the right handlebar with both hands steering it into the side of the mountain.

In several areas on this trail if you did roll it off the trail it would keep going for a LONG, LONG way.

You can't see the panoramic pictures very well in the blogging software, but when you click on the picture the full size image should pop up.

It really is beautiful country.  It's unusual for that area because with the logging the subsequent fires it is very open and you can actually see the countryside very well.  In a lot of the other areas around, it is so timbered up that you can't see anything but the trees all around you.

Some more beautiful country.  At the very bottom left you can see the creek that we started out on when we began the ride.

Looking from another vantage point later in the ride.

This next picture has several features that are familiar to several of you that may actually read this blog.  In the green area you can see the ATV trail as it heads back down near toward the bottom.  On the far left of the picture in the middle you can see Knowles Peak or 4th Peak as we tend to call it from the Bible Camp that is below it.  I'll be posting a blog post on climbing up there in the next couple days.  In the far background the mountains with the snow on them are actually the backdrop for Elbow Lake.  I'll be posting a blog post on our hike there as well.

Overall it is a great loop to ride and other than about 1/2 mile at the very back it is pretty easy riding.  Lots of wildlife if you stay on the lookout.  I've still got 2 or 3 more posts to make, I might as well stretch them out a bit instead of trying to post them all on the same day.

Missing the cool clean mountain air!

ATV Rescue - 2014 Edition

Well, I really enjoy bringing our ATVs up to camp in Montana and I really enjoy letting other people use them while we are there, but I guess I'm going to have to start requiring a proficiency test before I allow people to ride them!

Thankfully this time both the ATV and the operator only sustained minor injuries compared to the last time I had to rescue one of my ATVs off the mountain.  

One of my sisters was riding it and somehow got the front tire off the side of the trail and it was all over pretty quickly.  She was going very slow when it happened, but either leaned the wrong way or got it too far off the side or something, but it went over with her and a passenger going over with it.  They both fell off the side and the ATV rolled right over top of them.  Thankfully the small sapling trees helped hold most of the weight of the ATV off them and it rolled over once and landed on it's wheels still running.  Also, this is one of the few areas on the trail where there is only a 10 or 15 foot drop off the trail to a relatively flat area so that was a big help as well.  Some areas the ATV would have rolled end over end down the side of the mountain for several hundred feet.  

Here's a picture of where the ATV ended up.  The guy in the picture is my nephew who was helping me get it out.

Pictures never do justice on telling how steep things are.  Here's another angle of it.

We tried our best to get it out with the tools we had, but that last bit of slope was nearly straight up and the rachet straps that I had just weren't going to get it out.  Here is Duncan sitting on the front end of the ATV trying to get it to power up the slope.  We had it in 4X4 with the differential lock, but all it was doing was digging some big holes with the front tires. 

At one point I was pushing and he was sitting on it normally, but it felt like it was going to tip over backwards.  I also tried to pull it out with the other ATV, but that ended up getting it too far sideways and it was going to roll over sideways.  We ended up having to go back to camp and borrow a come along.

Even with the come along things were pretty iffy.  The front end of the ATV was pushing into the top of the hill and the back wheels were actually off the ground.  Things were creaking and straps were straining and we ended up breaking one of the smaller straps trying to pull with the other ATV at the same time we were winching with the come along.  

My brother Frank was helping by this time.

Finally we just went for broke and had Frank ride the ATV and got all it's wheels spinning at the same time Duncan was tightening the come along.  I had another rope tied up to a tree with the thought that if another strap broke at least the ATV wouldn't go all the way to the bottom again.

Thankfully with the ATV helping we got it back up on level ground!

You can see a little better how steep the slope it came up was by looking at the small tree that we were using to help keep the strap from digging in.  We ended up trying to use it as a pry bar to keep the front end of the ATV from digging in and it is laying to the left of the ATV in this picture and does a decent job of actually showing the angle of the slope.

Thankfully the ATV seemed relatively unharmed except for some areas that the plastic has pulled away from the main body.  Hopefully with just a little tweaking we can get it back in the proper place.  It seems to run and handle fine though.

I'll be updating the blog with some of the other things we did on vacation over the next few days.

That's it for now.  Nathan

Whispering Pines 50K Trail Race

Whispering Pines 50K trail race report.  My first ever DNF (Did not finish).

The weather actually turned out close to perfect for mid May in east Texas.  58 degrees and moderate humidity at the start, climbing to mid 70's and a slight breeze when I finished.  It had rained earlier in the week but the trails were in great shape and from that perspective I couldn't have asked for better conditions.

I did have a little bout with a stomach bug on Thursday before the race, everything was going right through me and that wasn't helping the old carbo loading very much at all.  I was feeling poor enough that I broke my running streak of 50+ days and decided to take a break that day.  Friday had me feeling better, but still not 100%, but I was going to be racing pretty much regardless.  Friday turned out to be a pretty hectic day and I ended up not being able to get in a run that day as well.  After a little over a 6 hour drive we got checked into the hotel and were in bed just after 10, but I was wired and couldn't seem to get to sleep.

My training hadn't been perfect with the 3 weeks off completely with the broken collarbone, but I felt like I had pretty much gotten back on track and was still thinking I might actually be competitive even though I was supposed to be focused on not falling more than running fast.  5:30 rolled around way too soon and ate a couple bagels and a banana and headed to the race.  Actually got started a little later than we wanted from the hotel, but made it to the race in plenty of time and packet pickup went really smooth and had about 30 minutes to spare before the race started at 7:00.  Got my drop bag ready and put it on the tarp provided and just tried to relax and enjoy it.  It was a beautiful morning and before you know it the race was ready to start.  

The 50K and 20 milers start 30 minutes before the 10 milers and 7K'ers so there were about 125 runners or so going off the line.  I was thinking about just keeping an easy pace, but I was still also thinking that I might be able to run right around 5 hours so didn't want to go out too easy.  That was just under a 10:00 pace and I just couldn't comprehend how I could run much slower than that, even walking up some of the steeper hills.

Right off the bat the course goes up a small hill, drops back down, up another hill, drops, back down, repeat, then down a big hill and up a big hill, lots of ups and downs.  It is single track so we all kind of got into a spot right at the start and then just kind of held our spot in line for better or worse.  I really felt like I was doing a pretty good pace for me, it felt like a little more effort than I was wanting, but not too bad.  I was hoping that the fact that we were running about 2,500' lower in elevation than where we live would help offset the higher humidity.  I had my phone set to just tell me the time and distance every 5 minutes instead of average pace, split pace and all that fun stuff and as I suspected it was lost as a goose and the GPS was shorting the course about 25% due to the heavy tree cover.  10 minutes in and it said that I had not even gone .75 miles and I knew I was running faster than 10:00 pace.

The trail was in good shape and the tree cover was so thick that it was shaded about 95% of the time.  There were tree roots everywhere and at first I seemed to be doing a fine job not tripping on them.  Just over a mile or so in people started to spread out a little and get some space between us and I started to relax a little and sure enough, I tripped hard and went down.  It happened very fast, and I reached to brace myself with both arms, not able to keep my reactions from working faster than my mind which would have said "don't brace yourself with your left arm!".  I popped back up and was running down the trail before really even thinking about it, but doing a mental inventory for pain, everything seemed fine.  I could still move my shoulder fine, I reached over and felt where the break in my collarbone was and it felt fine, I seemed to have averted total disaster barely a mile into the race.  I pledged to myself to pay more attention and focus on those tree roots even harder.  

Here's a picture that I took off the race website that I think shows what most of the course was like.

Maybe another 1/2 mile or so I think I glanced over at some cows in a nice pasture that we were running by and bam, I was on the ground again.  Again, my reactions were quicker than my brain and I reached out with both arms.  Again, somehow I ended up okay and I didn't re-break my collarbone.  

This was getting borderline ridiculous now, surely I can run without falling on a nice trail through the woods!  There weren't hardly any rocks or anything, just those tree roots everywhere.  With renewed focus and a big sigh of relief I continued on.  Maybe another mile down the road and I was on the ground again.  No idea what happened that time.  I don't think I was able to even reach out to brace myself before I was on the ground, but again somehow my collarbone was still intact and other than a growing number of scrapes and scratches, I was no worse for wear.

About this time I really started thinking whether I needed to continue or not.  The first aid station was at 3 miles and there was a shortcut back to the start on an old road there.  If I continued to fall at this rate it wasn't a matter of "if" I was going to re-break my collarbone, it was a matter of how far I was going to make it before I "did" re-break my collarbone.  The trail actually seemed to be getting a little better and I decided I would continue on, but just focus even harder on not falling.  

I seemed to finally get into a groove and really started making some progress.  My effort level still seemed a little higher than I would have expected, but I was running a pretty comfortable pace and walking on the steeper hills and I felt like I could maintain this level for a long time.  Weather was close to perfect still.  Before I knew it I was making my way toward the 2nd aid station at the 7 mile mark.  I had tripped a few times, but really nothing even close to a fall.  I was getting pretty confident.  

In and out of the 2nd aid station, some nice downhill running on a fairly smooth section of the course and I was feeling even better.  I actually caught up to some of the 7K runners that had made a shorter loop and felt very smooth and things were really feeling good here.  Maybe the best I felt the entire race.  The trail got hilly again and the tree roots showed back up, but I was able to make it back to the start line to finish the first loop without falling again and went through in 1:41 which was just 1 minute slower than I was planning.  3 1 hour and 40 minute loops would put me right at 5 hours.

I hit the hilly section at the start of the 2nd loop again and really focused on my feet and not tripping.  Made it through the first couple miles really well, didn't trip at all.  The hills were all much bigger the second time around and some of the smaller ones that I ran up the first time I walked up this time.  I was slowing down, but I was also focusing on not falling so I still felt pretty good about things.  Right about the time that I was feeling really confident again I went down hard.  Ended up skidding down a hill on my back a little bit.  Okay, that wasn't fun, but guess what?  I still hadn't re-broken my collarbone!!!  I went on with renewed focus on my feet placement and made it into the 1st aid station with just that one fall where I had fallen 3 times in that section the previous time through.  I was getting better!

Just some quick water and a GU and back down the trail.  This goes on a long uphill section for a little over a mile almost and I was starting to feel it.  I did a little bit of walking in here on some areas where the hill wasn't very steep at all.  I ended up matching up with another runner who was wearing sandals and I we chatted back and forth quite a bit over the next several miles.  I had forgotten to put any body glide on and my nipples were starting to rub me pretty good so somewhere in here I ended up taking my singlet off and tucking it into my race belt.  Somewhere around mile 15 or 16 a runner up ahead of us fell and called out to warn us not to trip over something, so of course I immediately proceeded to trip and fall for the 5th time.  It wasn't a bad fall though and I still felt okay about my improvement in my not falling ability.  Continued on to the 2nd aid station at the 17 mile mark and was starting to get tired, but actually pulled away from the guy wearing the sandals and was making a pretty decent pace.

I was taking GU every 45 minutes or so and drinking plenty of water.  In one of my falls I had landed on one of my water bottles though and the cap that only opens up when you squeeze on it was broken and it splashed water out with every step.  That essentially left me with one working 8oz water bottle for the distance between aid stations, then I would use the broken one to drink at the aid stations.  It was working fairly decently but I was getting a little worried about how that was going to work on the last lap with the temperatures were getting a little higher.

I left the 2nd aid station and started to enjoy the nice downhill section with the smooth trail for a bit, right up until I fell hard for the 6th time during the race.  Again, I reacted quicker than I thought and braced myself with both arms as I fell.  Again, somehow I didn't re-break my collarbone.  I was starting to get depressed with my continued falling and I was starting to get tired as well.  Renewed focus and kept going down the trail, but it seemed like I lost some of my energy and the little uphills were getting harder and harder and I was walking just about any uphill I came to.  I was starting to think that maybe I was really pushing my luck and the next time I fell might be the end of my lucky streak.  I was also thinking that as I got more and more tired, the chances of me tripping and falling were probably going to go up.

I was trying to enjoy the trail, the scenery was really nice and trees are just something we don't have many of in Lubbock.  Sure enough I started feeling good again and then found myself looking around and quickly found myself hitting the ground again for the 7th time.  Again my reactions were faster than my mind and I found myself bracing my fall with both arms.  Again I was lucky and didn't re-break my collarbone.

If this is starting to sound like a broken record to you, it was really starting to sound like it to me.  I was running with no music, just my phone telling me the time and distance every 5 minutes and the sounds of nature around me.  I had plenty of time to think and the more I thought the more I realized that I was really pushing the envelope here and not being very intelligent about this.  The whole reason why I took up running in the first place was to get into better shape for hunting and I was lucky enough to draw a once in a lifetime hunting tag this fall and here I was risking re-breaking my collarbone which could put me out for 3 - 6 more months by running this trail race.  I slowed down some more and really decided to just get back to the starting line without falling and call it a day.  I finished the 2nd loop in 2:03 for a total of 3:44 for 20.6 miles for an average pace of 10:54.  

That would have put me in 21st place out of 74 people who ran the 20.6 mile distance, but the race director of this trail race series doesn't allow you to drop down from the distance that you signed up for, so my official results are a DNF.  It was tough to stop, but really the smart thing to do, even though it still wears on me.  I could have just walked that last loop and still would have finished in the middle of the pack for the 50K runners, but I didn't sign up for a trail walk, I signed up for a trail run and I didn't want to spend 3 hours walking that last loop just to say I finished it.  In my mind I would have had to tell everyone, yeah I finished a 50K trail run, but I had to walk the last 10 miles.  Another possibility was that I would start out planning on walking the last loop, but get out there and start trying to run some of the smoother areas and risk falling more and that could have been even worse.

So that's pretty much my race report.  A big DNF.  Here's a picture of me sitting down after I finished.  Not the most flattering picture of me, but I think it really does a good job of showing in a picture how my day ended up.

I was more sore after this race than my marathon last year by quite a bit.  Just got my first run in yesterday and am probably going to just keep running some easy miles for now before I figure out any kind of a training plan.  I really enjoy the trail running, but I'm second guessing myself a little on how poorly I seem to do at it.  Not sure if I just don't pick my feet up enough or exactly what the problem is, but I seem to be better at falling than I am at running when it comes to trails.

 My wife ran the 10.3 miler and finished 36th out of 109 finishers.  She didn't fall one time!

Well, I guess that's my official race report.  For sure a learning experience for me.  The course was MUCH harder than I expected.  I really think I was in 3:40ish shape for a marathon and it took me longer than that to run 20.6 miles on the trail.  

Running with a broken collarbone...

Well, I've been pretty bad lately about keeping my blog updated.  Back in February I broke my collarbone skiing and have been dealing with it off and on since then.  

Not the smartest thing I've ever done, but I was enjoying going over some jumps in a little terrain park at Sippapu Ski resort when I landed wrong.  Not that exciting, but Cathy actually was taking a video of me when I wiped out.  I go over the 1st jump at about the 10 second mark in the clip.

When it was all said and done it just seemed to be one of those freak deals where I landed just wrong and that coupled with the fact that the snow was pretty much 100% manmade snow that had thawed and refrozen many times so that it was pretty much like falling on concrete.

I knew when I landed I hurt myself, I just didn't know how bad.  It was pretty painful, but I got back up on my skis (my skis didn't even come off) and skied down to the bottom of the mountain.  Once down at the bottom I started feeling around to see what hurt the most and figured out pretty quickly that something was messed up with my left collarbone.  There was a huge knot that wasn't supposed to be there.  A quick trip to the ski patrol first aid hut and they confirmed that something was messed up with my collarbone, they rigged up a makeshift sling and gave me an ice pack and sent me on the way to the walk in clinic in Taos which was about 45 minutes away.  The X-ray in Taos confirmed it, I had a clean break of my left clavicle, the only thing left was to decide whether it would need surgery or not.  They gave me a little nice sling and told me to get with an orthopedist as soon as I could.  We ended up going back to Sippapu and Cathy and Eli were able to ski the next morning before we headed back to Lubbock.  I didn't sleep that great that night, but we were there to ski and I wasn't going to be comfortable anywhere so we figured they might as well get to enjoy the skiing while we were there.

I was able to get into an orthopedic specialist that next Monday and he didn't think it would need surgery.  He also said I shouldn't run at least until he was able to verify that it was going to stay in that same position and not move around.  If it stayed in the same position he felt that I would probably be able to start running again in a few weeks.

After 3 weeks, the X-ray confirmed it was still in the same place so he grudgingly gave me permission to start running again (I guess he didn't say that I couldn't run anyway).  I started out fairly slowly and kept my arm in the sling while I was running.  I would actually hold onto the strap with my left hand to keep my arm from jostling around as much.  

5 weeks after I broke it I got another X-ray that showed that it was actually starting to heal a little.  

The Dr. told me to ditch the sling and start working on range of motion exercises.  I didn't realize it, but if you don't move your shoulder for an extended period of time it will really lock up on you.  There is a fine line that they have to run between letting you start using your arm before it heals and possibly re-breaking it and letting it heal completely but then having to spend months and months in physical therapy getting your range of motion back in your arm.    I was surprised at how limited my range of motion had already gotten and it took a few weeks to get pretty much back to normal.  I still wasn't cleared to lift anything heavy with my left arm, and still cleared to run only grudgingly with strict orders not to fall so trails were out of the question, but I was able to get pretty much back on track and started logging a few 50+ mile weeks.

We went quite a while between X-rays at this point and I was feeling pretty confident that things were progressing nicely.  I nearly had my full range of motion back and was even cheating a bit on the lifting heavy things.  I tried to keep things close to my body, but I hoisted a few 50lb feed sacks over my head filling my protein feeder down at my hunting land and a few things like that and felt pretty good.  I figured the last X-ray the week before my goal 50K trail race was just a formality more than anything.  I even went out on the trails a few times although I was pretty careful and thankfully didn't ever actually fall down.

My last X-ray looked pretty good to me, although I'm not a Dr. and the Dr. wasn't near as impressed with it as I was.

You can for sure see that it is making progress, but being almost 3 months since it broke, the Dr. was expecting it to be farther along and nearly completely healed.  There is some calcification showing, but it isn't healed.  The Dr. pretty much told me that I was already pushing the envelope with all the running I was doing and really didn't think running a 50K trail race was a good idea at all.  If I did run it I needed to be really careful and not fall down.  If I did fall down, for I for sure shouldn't reach out to catch myself with my left arm as this could easily cause the collarbone to re-break.

What I went into the checkup thinking was going to be a slam dunk ended up becoming a hard decision.  Did I skip the trail race that I had been training 4 months for?  Do I just run it very cautiously?  I told the Dr. that I was probably going to go ahead and run the race, but I would try my best not to fall.

I pretty much failed miserably on that goal, but thankfully it seems like my collarbone was able to stay together.  I'll update the blog with my race report soon.

Don't take my experience as irrefutable evidence that you can start running again after taking 3 weeks off for a broken collarbone, but that was my experience and so far it seems like I was able to get away with it.  Luck may have as much to do with that as anything though.  

One thing I did find was a relatively unknown alternative to the plate and screws if you do need surgery though. http://www.sonomaorthopedics.com/collarbonedoc/ seems like it would be the way to go to let you get back on your feet and active as fast as possible.  I didn't need surgery so it wasn't really something I looked into, I'm sure it is very expensive, but not sure how much more that traditional surgery or anything.  Might be an option for some folks anyway.

That's it for now.  Nathan