Moose Encounters

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Last seen: 01/28/2008
Location: Colorado
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After spending a good deal of time riding trails out of Breckendridge this summer, we've really come to love the extensive singletrack trail network that connects Breck with Keystone and Frisco. More than that, we've learned to respect the propensity for heavy clouds to gather, coalesce and dump their colossal loads of rain and hail here before rolling eastward over the Kenosha Mountains. After a notably dry first half of the season we'd been thrashed on four consecutive trips to the slopes of Georgia Pass. With this in mind we started Friday's ride carrying backpacks full of rain and cold weather gear, but the familiar 'storm tubes' never formed. Crazy ol' Mother Nature would challenge us in a new and exciting way, however.

The ride would have been a semi-epic anyway. After about 45 miles of almost-all-singletrack we were approaching the last few miles just as darkness fell hard. We had already been out almost 7 hours and had approximately 15 minutes left to ride. Just then R.R. came around a bend and saw the unmistakable outline of a giant bull moose standing in the trail in the half-dark, dead ahead. There's a moose on the trail right there, he reported, coming back toward me. That's not good, I said helpfully. All I could think about was some video I had seen on late-night cable of a guy getting brutally attacked by a deranged bull moose.

We tiptoed up the trail to take a look. Sure enough. He was right there, looking at us as we looked at him. Appeared to be about 7 feet at the shoulder. His rack was maybe 6 feet across. Amazing. It was by far the largest animal I've ever seen in the wild. If you can call 15 minutes away from the Sno-Dallion condominium complex 'the wild.'

Darkness fell completely, and the improbable shape of the beast was barely detectable against the thick forest. He obviously did not want to leave the trail and was not frightened enough of us to do it. In the heavy woods, on the side of a steep hill, there was really no place for him to go easily or for us to go. We stared at each other. If he had been inclined to charge -- at 35 mph I'm told -- we wouldn't have had a chance to get away, but we satisfied ourselves somehow (probably with our extensive backgrounds in zoology and stuff) that he would not. There was some strategic rock-throwing into the nearby forest in an attempt to scare the big fellar into taking off. There was some yelling, etc. Yaah moose. We were trying to move him out without antagonizing him. The moose ambled down the trail a bit, unimpressed. We followed, step by step, thinking of moose attack videos. We advanced on the moose, in the dark. This is probably the stupidest thing we've ever done, I said, and maybe the last. Where'd he go? We moved forward until we could make out his shape again, standing dead in the trail, looking at us. Hey Rocky, watch me pull a rabbit out of this hat. He was going nowhere.

There came the point where we could keep moving toward this unmoving and apparently defiant beast, take our chances, or just leave the trail to the bigger, badder animal. Eventually, we chose the latter, no doubt wiser, course of action and turned around. Since it was at that point completely dark, and the trail was rough and technical, and the bushwacking route so tangled and steep as to be impassable in the dark, we had little choice but to walk/carry our bikes a good way back up the trail to the nearest available alternate route, and arrived back at the homebase after 10 pm. An unforgettable experience. Score one for the moose.

Robert

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