Training Log Archive: SwampfoxIn the 1 days ending Oct 7, 2018: |
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Sunday Oct 7, 2018 #
Note
Linked up with Tyler to run through the One Cowboy Relay course. There was dense fog up top stretching up form the south and you could see it was at least as far north as past the Visitors Center, but it was hard to tell how much further north it was. It turned out to be lightly foggy in the course area, but mostly it was just overcast with subdued lighting. We wouldn't have had to go far in different directions to get either full sunshine or else full on scary monster fog.
I made the mistake of not telling the folks helping with control pickup to leave the streamers in place, so there were only a couple of controls still marked. But no big deal, as it was no problem to be sure about where the controls were.
Running the course for myself, I can see it really worked out about the way I had hoped. The first 4 (motala) loops were out in part in open sage with a spur/gully character, and in part in a more granity area of a controlled burn pine forest. Then, when you crossed the road for the final loop, the terrain and vegetation changed markedly. There were several potentially tricky sections of aspen forest where if you weren't paying attention, you could easily have drifted well off your line and dropped a good bit of time--especially if you dropped elevation in the process. There's a good bit more mapped on the other side of the road that we used or that people saw, and it's good, hilly terrain.
Warming up, we saw three moose, and we tacked on another moose while doing some jogging through forest after running the course. When you see 4 moose, that's a pretty good day.
As I was parking at the Finish, I noticed that right across the road there was a fair amount of fresh slash--green pine limbs--scattered on the ground, as if someone had cut down a pine tree and had discarded the smaller limbs right there. It turned out to be a good bit more than that, and it looks like just in the past week or so the Forest Service had been out in the area of the final loop and had cut down many smaller pine trees. I really have no idea what objective they are striving for, or, if what they are doing has any chance of achieving that objective. But I have come across many areas now on various of our maps in the past two years where small trees have been cut down or where tracked equipment has gone in and masticated (chewed up, ground down) small pine trees. It's weird to me, because having no real idea of what is going on, I would have guessed that if anything was going to be addressed vis-a-vis trees up top, it would be doing something about and useful with all the beetle kill trees. And I would have been wrong!
I made the mistake of not telling the folks helping with control pickup to leave the streamers in place, so there were only a couple of controls still marked. But no big deal, as it was no problem to be sure about where the controls were.
Running the course for myself, I can see it really worked out about the way I had hoped. The first 4 (motala) loops were out in part in open sage with a spur/gully character, and in part in a more granity area of a controlled burn pine forest. Then, when you crossed the road for the final loop, the terrain and vegetation changed markedly. There were several potentially tricky sections of aspen forest where if you weren't paying attention, you could easily have drifted well off your line and dropped a good bit of time--especially if you dropped elevation in the process. There's a good bit more mapped on the other side of the road that we used or that people saw, and it's good, hilly terrain.
Warming up, we saw three moose, and we tacked on another moose while doing some jogging through forest after running the course. When you see 4 moose, that's a pretty good day.
As I was parking at the Finish, I noticed that right across the road there was a fair amount of fresh slash--green pine limbs--scattered on the ground, as if someone had cut down a pine tree and had discarded the smaller limbs right there. It turned out to be a good bit more than that, and it looks like just in the past week or so the Forest Service had been out in the area of the final loop and had cut down many smaller pine trees. I really have no idea what objective they are striving for, or, if what they are doing has any chance of achieving that objective. But I have come across many areas now on various of our maps in the past two years where small trees have been cut down or where tracked equipment has gone in and masticated (chewed up, ground down) small pine trees. It's weird to me, because having no real idea of what is going on, I would have guessed that if anything was going to be addressed vis-a-vis trees up top, it would be doing something about and useful with all the beetle kill trees. And I would have been wrong!