Running Uphill

This spring I decided to give competitive mountain running a try.

These high on vertical, low on lateral foot races are a big deal in Alaska, with several events so popular they are lottery entry only, and easily fill to capacity.

I’ve always admired the racers, and been a follower of some of the more popular events, keeping tabs on who is doing well, who is poised to strike a big win, sets a record, etc. That being said, I’ve never had a strong interest in competing.

Running is something I actually really enjoy. Aside from being a highly practical and economic work out, it’s one of the few workouts I do where I find my mind can just wander. I come back from runs feeling refreshed in a way I just don’t get on most bike rides.

The last few autumns I’ve been doing more overland “mountain” running in the Chugach, and, aside from the fact that I really enjoy it as an off-season activity, I noticed that when it came to going uphill, I was pretty descent.

This last point shouldn’t come as a surprise. I’m fairly small, which gives me an advantage in just about any uphill-oriented activity; but it also doesn’t hurt that the muscle mechanics of backcountry skiing and pedaling a bike lend themselves well to steep foot travel.

After this winter’s Tour of Anchorage and Kachemak Nordic Marathon, I decided I should give competitive mountain running a try this spring, before the mountain bike race season began in earnest.

Aside from suspecting that I would do OK, I also expected that mountain running would provide a flavor of competition I embrace.

I like events where I’m going head to head with others, pushing myself to keep up or keep ahead. If the race ends just a wheel length, ski length, or maybe a foot fall, in front or behind someone, I got my money’s worth.

The bell curve for results in these races, particularly the shorter uphill-only ones, is tightly packed.

As excited as I was to give this all a try this spring, I did not directly train for these events in any way. In fact, I ran less this spring than I have in the last 10 years or so due to some scheduling stuff; though I was road biking a normal amount, and had good carry-over fitness from Nordic.

 

The first event I signed up for was Kals Knoya Ridge. The race starts a short walk from a secluded subdivision at the corner of Muldoon and Tudor, and is pretty informal. The short of it: I placed 9^th of 59 in the “Original Dome” course, running the 3.5 miles and 2,900 vertical feet in 50:25.

Not surprisingly, I loved it. I was quite happy with my time too. Without much for reference, I was hoping for about an hour.

I was also quite happy with my choice to run the “Original” course, as opposed to the “Full Monty,” which follows the original course, and then continues upward along the ridgeline toward Knoya Peak, for a total of 5.3 miles and 4,300 feet of vertical. Veterans tell me the longer event rolls along seemingly endlessly. I think if I wanted a better idea of how I stacked up against my age bracket peers, I would have found a better answer in the longer distance, but, common, this was my first time, and, as I’m coming to learn, having a good race doesn’t just mean signing up for the biggest and the baddest option. Maybe I’ll try the Full Monty in the future. TBD.

 

The highlight of the event was undoubtedly having some great comradery with Nathan and Rob, who were both trying out this mountain run thing too. It was good to have friends to share anxieties with at the start line, and war stories with on the walk/jog back down.

Also, we all faced a brief but raging snow and hail squall on the final push to the top. It sure made those last punishing minutes very real.

Don’t start in the back

Rob, Nathan, and I all kind of agreed: we didn’t want to be “that guy” who starts too close to the front, and causes a traffic jam, so we all started in the back. All three of us learned pretty quick into the run, we should have given ourselves more credit. All of us spent a good portion of the event having to barge through the emerging devils club to pass long conga lines of runners. On the upside, we all agreed it kept our pacing pretty chill down low along the rolling and flat sections. It was rare that I felt like I could push the pace much faster along most the flat sections, certainly not fast enough to make aggressive passes. I reserved my passing mostly to the short up hills lower down, and occasionally on flats or rolling terrain if someone started to let a gap open up in front of them. I was only passed once the entire time in Knoya, and I had just passed the guy. It’s a nice morale booster to do all the passing, but, not good strategy.  Higher up in the race I began to catch up with more runners going a pace closer to mine, but, I still did a lot of passing every time the course pointed upward.

At the finish, there was basically no question, I had a blast! I wished it was a bit more of a “race,” but I felt really good with my effort overall.

 

The next event was Government Peak. Starting at the Government Peak Rec Area, the course climbs about 3,700 vertical feet in 2.5 miles according to my Garmin. I finished 1:00:28; 38^th/105 overall; 8^th in age class.

Compared to Kals, this event felt brutal! The weather was practically the opposite from Kals: mid 60s, sunny, and a light breeze. Quite nice really. Government also started in three, self-seeded waves. I placed myself in wave 1, for racers who thought they could finish in under an hour. This seemed reasonable to me based on the previous week’s run, though I knew it would take work. I did not want to get stuck in the back again.

The race went out pretty fast considering what we had on our plate. I just held my own on the short approach. There were a few quick broken climbs early on and I made a few moves. There was a lot of jostling going on. People who went too hard on the lower flats were suddenly dropping back, and people who had better uphill legs were scooting up.

Then the course hits an endless Alaskan mountain wall. A bulk load of the vertical route is really steep scrambling, hand over hand, grab an alder, grab a root, grab a rock.

It’s endless, and it’s steep.

I was sitting in with two dudes who were probably going just a tad slower than I could, but not enough to justify a risky pass. One or two speedy climbers were able to scramble through, but positioning was pretty static.

There were very few short flats through the steeps, footing was unsure, and my lower back was complaining loudly. Also, my right foot was growing increasingly numb. I tried to pick up a jog any time there was a flat, but between my foot and back, it was uncomfortable, and the pitch would go so steep again that I could not carry an momentum.

Eventually the course hits the more rolling alpine ridge.

This is where the true climbers separated themselves, and despite my hopes, I was not amongst them. I know the exact point where my biking and skiing muscles had given me what they could. I remember realizing, in almost horror, that the fitness freeride was over.

I power-paced the endless ridgeline, trying to focus on form, and recruiting strength by channeling skinning and biking technique wherever possible.

Efficiency allowed me to pick off a couple others, but overall, I watched the nose of the race pull farther and farther ahead. I could not summon the power to jog, even though the gradient was generally low enough I probably could have we it not for the effort dumped out on the wall below.

Right near the finish, two guys behind me punched it, and though I didn’t have much left to contest, I took the bait and punch it too, getting pipped two spots. I felt physically destroyed.

 

More?

A friend asked if my bikes were going to get jealous of my sneakers?

I think for now the answer is safely: no.

I really had fun in Kals, but, I also think I learned in Government, that the former was a fitness free ride. Government kicked my bike-pedaling butt.

In both events, one thing I noticed, was that while those around me were very often sucking air, I rarely found myself breathing hard, comparatively. My legs were giving it their all, but they weren’t asking for more than my heart and lungs were ready to provide. It’s typically quite the opposite for me in full-on bike races, where my legs will outstrip cardio.

Another lightbulb I had go off in Government was: “why am I paying money to run up this mountain, when I can run up any mountain in Alaska for free?”

The answer of course, is obvious: it’s a race. But I guess, when I had that thought, it no longer felt like one to me. I was slammed. I was just surviving. If I beat someone, it wasn’t really because I had more skill or cunning, was actually faster; they just hurt more than I did.

It was pretty clear that running uphill is a more of a 1:1 activity in terms of fitness returns. You get what you put in.

You can get strong on a bike by training a lot, and turn pedals like a machine; but if you can’t handle the bike, at least in mountain biking, you’ll just be a machine that crashes into trees.

I think Kals will stay on my calendar going forward, and I’am hoping to revist competitive uphill running in fall if it avails itself, but whether I do Government again, or sign on for mid-summer races – this season or next – remains somewhere between “we’ll see” and “probably not.”

As for competitive trail running…that was never really an interest from the beginning, and certainly, this did not spark any interest. I just hung on through flats in these two courses.

 

Not surprisingly, I had some broader takeaways and learnings.

 

Don’t start in the back

OK, so, I didn’t know how Knoya was going to go, being my first running race ever, but I won’t make that mistake again. I would not start on the front row either, but, I think it’s fair to say that, I should at least be close enough to the front to see the leaders. At government, there could be some logic to starting in wave 2, in that, and if you’re on the tail end of the wave 1 seeding like me, you might be able to get a little more freedom to maneuver through the steeps and run your own pace.

Passing seemed tricky.

It felt difficult to ludicrous to pass in both races. I got the sense in Knoya that passing just doesn’t happen a lot in general. People settle out and dig in. Since I was clearly too far back in that race, I had to make endless passes.

Sometimes something like this happens in bike racing due to a mechanical or because a faster group will lap a slower group. Other riders are often all too eager to get out of the way, and at times, I’ve had to tell a rider I’ve caught to just chill out, and let me around at safe spot for both of us: they don’t need to throw themselves into the devils club!

In this case, it felt rather the opposite, particularly at Government.

It felt like passing involved mandatory devils club bashing, saying “on your left” was an inconvenience,” and in some cases, a little elbowing and shoulder bumping was required. Early on in Knoya, passing was swift, and mostly relegated to the short hills, where I would pass up to 5 people in as little as 20 feet. I wasn’t too concerned since they were usually going really slow as soon as they hit a hill.

Later on in Knoya, and for most of Government, I found that I really had to say something if I wanted the pass to go smoothly, or provide a gentle tap on an elbow. If all else failed, it was time to get pushy. It struck me that, given the sometimes sketchy footing, it was safer for both of us to facilitate a smooth pass, than fight for a narrow trail, but several times it came down to the later.

Conversely, at Government, I had a handful runners come charging up behind me. I could quite literally hear them approaching – their heavy and increasingly loud breathing, their shoes drumming out a speedier tempo than those around me. Essentially, the second I had a chance, I would take a step to the side and wave them through. In a few instances, I got the sense they were almost confused, before huffing out a thanks and carrying on. It just struck me as obvious: it’s a 3,500 foot climb, if they’re going this hard halfway in, what business do I have folding them back?

Anyway, like I said, it didn’t feel malevolent, it was just clear passing etiquette is different here.

 

The silence is deafening.

I think one of the oddest things, was how absurdly quiet these races were. The start of a bike race is a notoriously loud and predictable chorus. First there is the clicking in as cleats are locked into pedals; then the ratcheting and clunking of shifting gears and clinking of winding chains; a brief interlude of hissing freewheels, abruptly broken by the the wailing of brake rotors as the paceline slows and files in as it hits the first single track or downhill corner and everyone speed checks.

Throughout the race there is pretty continuous mechanical clatter, along with friendly jeering and cheering, whoops and hollers, directional “lefts” “rights,” and the occasional crunching and vegetation thrashing of a crash or pile up.

In this case, people jogged through the woods in an endless pace line, and the only noise was the collective sound of heavy breathing, and of sneakers plodding over the damp spring earth.

The silence created a bit of an insanity in my head!

When I did say anything to anyone, it was always in a whisper, like we were in a theater or something. So odd.

 

Stand up

I noticed a lot of people hunched and bunched on the steeps. It’s tempting to drop down and get low, but I found that the more upright I could stay, the more power I could draw out of my lower back and glutes, relieving stress and transferring load off my quads onto my core. Literally, the more I tried to replicate a steep skin track, the more people I passed. Not surprisingly, when the grade got so steep I had to tuck, I got myself into a bike-like position to maintain glute and lower back engagement.

 

Mall walker

I tried to run as much as possible, but when a group or a grade knocked me out of my jog and I had to walk, I swung my arms gently. It felt dumb, but as carryover from skinning technique, it also engaged my lower back, and I passed people.

 

Go for the ankles

Something I noticed in Kals later in the race as I cleared the endless conga lines and caught up with more racers going my pace, was that I was hitting the bases of the climbs harder than those around me. Just like I would on a bike or skis, I tried to carry momentum, whether it was actual, or just physio-mechanical, into the base of every climb, and then allow my pace to drift back down to a sustainable level as the climb continued. The result was that I would make a lot of passes near the bottom of a climb, putting distance into those behind me, and often closing gaps on those in front of me. At some point, it occurred to me that I was attacking at the ankles of all these climbs, something I can’t do on a bike since that’s where all my cohorts attack too. On a bike, if I can attack, it’s usually near the top, or, in this analogy, at the forehead, or even cresting the scalp.

 

Shoes

I ran in a pair of $65 sneakers. These are same pair of cheap “trail running” shoes I’ve been buying once a year and running in until they blow up for at least a decade. They have enough tread for trails, and do quite well on rock. When the squall hit during Knoya, the lower portion of the course turned into a greasy mess. I was lucky I was above it and running through the rocky alpine. There were a few places higher up on Government I was envious of those with treadier shoes, but overall, they were fine. I’ve only owned one pair of true trail running shoes in my life, and they disappointed me on all fronts. If it had been muddy I would have needed something better, so I won’t say never, but, I’m glad I didn’t rush out and buy an expensive pair of kicks.

AK Fall: Best if Enjoyed in Moderation

Psst. I have a secret. I kind of like fall in Southcentral Ak.
It’s an acquired taste for sure. Perhaps not the sweetest of autumn vintages – can anything compete with Indian summer during peak foliage in New England?
Alaska fall is not something that can, or should be consumed in any great quantity, but it is sweet, even if not long to be savored.
Sometime during the endless daylight of the summer the solstice, I awake from sleep – already a scarce commodity – and lay awake in the burning light of 4 am, having just dreamt that the short summer had already ended, and darkness was returning. It’s part a horror, part a wish.
This summer was hot, dry, and awesome. I got a lot of time in the saddle. Too much? As the day’s waned, and nights grew, I had to admit, I was looking forward to a break, and a change in pace.

Res-Devils

I caught two great rides on the Kenai with Nathan A. First on the list was the Res-Devils Loop on the last weekend and the last Sunday of August. Both of us had just wrapped up from the Trifecta races, so the legs were tired, and some very light overnight showers Saturday put a dusting of snow on the ridgelines and provided plenty of inspiration.
Despite this, the trail was still dry, and while there wasn’t much foliage to speak of down low, colors in the passes were approaching peak.

 

Overlooking Kenai Lake.

Juneau Lake.

Love this section.

Swan Lake

Bone dry, blue skies, bright color.

Snow on the ridges.

Looking back to the Pass from Hope overlook.

Russian Loop

I expected to spend a bit more time on Russian this fall than I ended up realizing, so in retrospect, I’m really glad we snagged this ride over Labor Day. The weather wasn’t particularly stunning, and admittedly colors weren’t quite peaking yet, but with this trail fully brushed out, it was hard to complain.

Kenai Lake break.

Cloudy reflections.

Burning fireweed below Cooper Peak.

 

Running
The fact that I run is a well-kept secret. I actually run quite a bit for someone who identifies as a cyclist. That doesn’t mean I’m strong, or fast, but there are some great over-land runs to be had in AK, and this is my time of year to branch out. I hadn’t been on Summit Creek Trail since 2013, and hadn’t been over the Summit Creek/East Creek Pass since 2009. Adam was an awesome sport and joined me for a run to the col between East Creek and Resurrection Pass. From there, we turned southward and followed the ridgeline upward and eventually back around to a high col the leads to a hidden tarn just a bit below and east of the East Creek/Summit Creek Pass.

 

Looking down to East Creek/Summit Creek Pass.

Looking for goats. None sighted.

An after work run on McHugh Peak with Lee. Photo L.M.

Crow Pass Skiing

A typical wet fall storm parked over the region early in September delivering rain for 13 days straight. Somehwere toward the end of that deluge, temps dropped and snow started stacking up above Hatcher Pass and Crow Pass. I knew the window might open, and on Friday the 18^th, I slid my bedroom shades back, planning to go to work, only to be greeted by blue skies and an incredibly low snow line.
I was grateful I’d put my ski gear away ready to go, and quickly packed my bag and went down to the garage to scrape the off-season storage wax from my bases while scarfing down eggs and bacon.
There were a few inches of sopping-wet snow clinging to the leafy alders at the Crow Pass Trail Head, and I needed my storm shell to keep dry as the warm morning sun turned the trail into a cold, wet, collapsed alder obstacle course. I was stupid enough to beat anyone else up to the pass, and from the waterfalls upward, ended up breaking the skinner in about 2 feet or more heavy fresh, underlain by a solid but saturated base. Clouds moved in as I climbed, but moved in and out at rapid intervals, providing easy windows to ski through. A few others showed up later, and I ended up doing two runs. A third would have been nice, but I didn’t have confidence the clouds would keep up their intervals. I skied all the way back to the top of the falls without tagging a single rock: Easily the deepest skiing I’ve done in September or October.

 

Looks more like winter than mid-September.

The Summit Glacier has suffered in the heat. The cracks are big.

Burma Road Loop

I really enjoy road riding in the Valley during the shoulder seasons, but I’ve stuck to Palmer and Butte on these rides. I’d wanted to check out a loop in the Knik/Point Mackenzie/Big Lake area that included a long chunk of dirt on Burma Road. I’d Burma was a good road, and Phil was up for an adventure. As with most other Valley riding, it was really pleasant. We parked at the Wal-Mart, and traffic was pretty light, and generally very respectful. A lot of the main roads in the valley have parallel bike paths, but unlike Anchorage, where these paths cross hundreds of driveways and side streets where the right-of-way is ambiguous, in the Valley these intersections are far less frequent. That being said, theese paths also tend to be covered in loose rocks kicked up by ATVs and quads, so they can be a mixed blessing. Burma Road itself though was excellent: good flow, narrow, rolling, winding, and well packed. There were two very large puddles at the south end. Phil, on his cross bike, rode through both. I was on the road bike with its 25C slick tires, I made it through the first but portaged the second. Other than that, both bikes were equally adept at this ride, though it was pavement heavy, and I think slicks and taller gears were optimal.

Knik Arm.

Burma Road.

For real?

 

Cyclocross

I’ve been helping out with the Arctic Cross cyclocross race series the past few falls. I don’t have a burning desire to race cross for a number of reasons excuses, starting with the fact that I’m a wuss; but I do like watching cross racing since you can often see a good chunk of the course from a single point, and more importantly, I like hanging out with my friends. We added an event this year so we now have three adult races, plus a short kids race, and cross has gone from being a half-day event with maybe 50 people to basically a full-day activity with 125-200 entrants!
One day, for giggles, I stuck my Garmin in my pocket and let it run while I, umm, ran around, setting up the course, timing, and taking the course back down: I logged about 6 miles over 6-7 hours. It was neat to see. Fortunately, a lot of people pitch in, otherwise that number would be a lot higher!
Photos from the season: LINK

 

CX T-REX.

Do nothing

As winter turns into spring, the days get longer, and so with it, the activity list. Some of the biggest ski missions of the year come by a defacto in March-May thanks to better weather, deeper snow, and the need to chase that cold and deep snow into the higher elevations. At the same time, road riding, and soon enough, mountain biking ramp up and there’s a pressing need to start putting in more time on the saddle. Suffice to say, the spring shoulder season isn’t really a shoulder season at all. I’m OK with that, but I’m a firm believer in doing a big-block recovery, and I’m not talking about a recovery ride or mellow day, I’m talking about a real block. Some folks fret about how boring fall is here and how there’s nothing to do. I say: embrace it, take a rest.

Get out

The leaves have dropped, the sun is noticeably lower, but the snow line seems stagnant. Get out of town, get out of state, get out of country…more on that later:

6:30am in LAX Ted Bradley...

Glen Alps to Falls Creek Ridge Line Traverse: Abort

Creative Credit on this one goes to Dan “The Colt.”

The plan was to start at Glen Alps, and traverse the ridge dividing Power Line Pass and Rabbit Creek valleys back to the Falls Creek drainage. Along the way, we’d tag Ptarmigan and North and South Suicide peaks, along with the lesser Flat Top, Peak 2, 3, and Flake Top.

Ambitious; as Dan noted, the advantage was that if we needed to bail, it would be pretty easy to exit.
Despite an optimistic forecast, the weather over the Front Range spun in the wrong direction as the day went on. We started early and cruised along Flake Top Ridge with clouds clinging to the upper reaches of our higher destinations, but appearing to maybe be breaking up, or maybe we were just optimistic.
We summited Ptarmigan via the west ridge, climbing into a soup, but following a descent path, and picked our way back down the wide south gully in hero scree. As we dropped, it was obvious it was taking longer to descend back out of the clouds then it should have, and the clouds wrapping around us felt darker. When we finally dropped down low enough to see where we were, we had emerged into a stormier world, and had also passed well below the ridge line and were closer to the valley bottom.
We could hardly even see the Suicides anymore, let alone the crest of Homicide Ridge. We decided to head up valley to Rabbit Lake in the hope that the weather would turn again and show us the way.
No such luck. We caught only a few momentary glimpses of the day’s final, but much more committing objectives, and each time, a wall of clouds would come barreling up the valley, socking us back in. I'm sure we could have picked our way through, but climbing slippery rocks surrounded by cliffs with no views had no appeal. We turned into the wind and headed back down valley, veering north at the end of Canyon Road up the back side of Flat Top and back over to Glen Alps. Along the way we jogged through a 40-degree rain, and passed back over Flat Top for the second time of the day with far less to see and far more people. Delightful.
We assumed that when we got back to the car, the skies would lift and the sun would shine, but instead I had the wipers on high headed down Toilsome Hill as a fall downpour cut loose from above.

No regrets though. This circuit was 13 miles with 7,000 feet of climbing, and we were both pleased with the climb up Ptarmigan, which had a few interesting scrambles near the top, but super smooth on the way down. I’d do it again for sure.

Desert Southwest?

Looking down at the Ptarmigan Tarn from the west ridge of Ptarmigan just before disappearing into the clouds.

Re-emerging from the clouds lower than planned to a gloomier world.

Looking down valley during a momentary break. A wall of clouds on the way up to block it back in.

A quick view of South Suicide from Rabbit Lake. Not going to happen today.

The sweet smell of desperate September skiing.

Bird to Glen Alps

Creative credit for this one goes to Phil. Recently, Phil and Natalie took a long weekend to hike from Girdwood back to their doorstep on the Anchorage Hillside, a trek that has always caught my eye.
It’s just that, all that pesky biking gets in the way of long hikes like these.
Looking for a shorter, though still solid day-trip this past weekend, Phil suggested Bird to Glen Alps on Sunday.
I was stoked!

After leaving a car at Glen Alps, Natalie dropped us off in Bird. As though that weren’t awesome enough, she told us there would be homemade mac’n’cheese waiting back at the house!

We power-hiked and jogged the 18.9 miles back to Anchorage in 7:45 with somewhere between 8,500-9,000 feet of vertical between. We had great visibility and a moderate breeze most the day, with only about a half mile spent working through some soup near the summit of Bird Ridge Overlook. That part made for interesting route finding on the slippery/crumbly rock. Things got a little extra spicy for about 5 minutes when we tried to drop down too soon, realized we had erred and were heading for a big rock face, and on the climb back to safety, I set off a mini landslide. It just proves the point that pretty much all activities will devolve into trying to push big rocks down a hill just to see them explode…

Phil knew the route well, and the tricks and secrets to avoid the schwack crossing Indian Pass. Fall colors were at their peak too: bright red tundra up high and vibrant orange in the valleys; with lots of juicy and sweet low bush blueberries to eat as we marched over the slopes.

Bird Creek Valley

Banks of clouds and clear views over Turnagain Arm on Bird Ridge.

Emerging from the soup descending off Bird Ridge Overlook.

Bird Ridge Overlook on the left, the Beak on the right.

The rock face we were looking to avoid...

Looking back toward Indian Pass before heading over Ship Creek Pass.

 

Jingle Bells

I love Christmas, but I hate jingle bells.

Not the popular holiday song, but the little bells so commonly found on Alaska trails during the summer.

“Bear bells,” they are commonly called.

“Travel in Bear Country 101” tells us to make noise; lots of it.

At some point, someone realized attaching a jingle bell or two to themselves, their pet, or their bike, would accomplish this task.

Alliteration is great, so why not call them bear bells?

I don’t really care so much if someone uses a bear bell or not to be honest, so long as they’re not riding a foot off my back wheel for hours on end, then, my opinion changes.

Suffice to say, I’ve never used so-called bear bells in the backcountry, or until recently, the front country for that matter.

My disdain for them is less founded in my hate for all things jingly and merry, but because they’re ineffective at their supposed name, scaring away bears.

I spend a lot of time in the summer riding through the Kenai backcountry. Sometimes, I’m accompanied by other riders who sport these jingle bells.

When the cow parsnip and other thick vegetation lining the trails goes into photosynthetic overdrive, it can tower 6 feet above the ground and form a nearly impenetrable wall on either side of the trail corridor (and often enough right across it).

With more than 30 feet between myself and a jingly riding partner, I can’t hear their bell anymore in these conditions.

Now, I’m no good at “mathes,” but I can get by, so here’s a little algebraic fun.

If a mountain biker is traveling 7 miles per hour (an average pace), according to my advanced abilities to use Google, that means they are traveling 10.2 feet per second.

This means that, at least for my own auditory senses, I would not hear them until they were just under 3 seconds away.

Obviously, in an open, alpine meadow, or somewhere with less sound dampening, the noise of the jingle bell will carry a lot further, but then, hopefully the hiker/biker is following Bear Safety 101 Point Number 2: Stay alert, use all your senses, like, your eyes.

I will grant too, that bears have a much better auditory sense than I do so they might pick up on an approaching Christmas caroler before I would.

Another mark against the bear bell I learned of recently: bears don’t know what bells are, nor that they should be frightened by them.

I’m going to call this, “kind of true.”

I’m pretty sure that bears aren’t into music-making devices, and if they were, I’d guess them to be heavy metal rockers with a soft spot for jam bands (in keeping with their copious consumption of mushrooms and fermented meats and berries).

So, a bear isn’t really going to know what the doofy jingly, biped is, and in remote Alaska particularly, the bell might just as well be announcing “dinner!”

On the Kenai, and closer to “urban” Alaska, I’m willing to bet a lot of bears have had varying levels of encounters with humans, and if the bears frequent trails where jingle-bell-wearing users pass by regularly, they have probably established some kind of relationship between the two.

That doesn’t really do much about the limited ability of the bell to cast its sound though.

So what works?

For bikers, a good, handle bar-mounted, spring-loaded bell can give off a piercing ring, bet how easily can they be rung in key places (fast down hills, curvy sections, or areas of thick vegetation), as opposed to just constantly and dully.

Maybe one of the best bets, our own flappers.

Constant communication is a good place to start, and easily fills the void of an incessantly ringing bell.

Like the jingle bell though, a conversation may not carry over distance. For this, I recommend a baritone friend.

A loud shout as is good as any, and will inform a nearby bear that a human is coming through.

Whether that whets their appetite or not, well, that’s a different issue.