No worries...

When my brother and I were driving across country many years ago and planning to drive through the Mojave at night, we came up with a plan for dealing with rattlesnakes which, we were sure, would be a problem. We had this super huge light rigged up to keep them away. It might have been a truck headlight wired directly into his electrical system via the cigarette lighter (back when it was actually called a cigarette lighter and not a "power outlet"). But when it came time to use it, we suddenly realized that we weren't sure if it would keep them away...or attract them. Ah, genius.

So as they say, "Relax and have a homebrew."

[I started searching for a good picture of a bear or a rattlesnake for this post, then decided that I should stop surfing through those sorts of pictures... Sorry. No pictures today.]

Things I am worried about on the CTR?
In no particular order:

Pooping in the woods (or above treeline)...
We're gonna stop right there and not go into too much detail with that one (or should I say "two"?).

(Mis-)Navigating the trail, especially at night...
Assuming that I have it in me to do a long night pull, it seems like it would be easy to miss a turn or get off trail. Maybe the GPS will make that nye impossible, but we'll see. I would like to do as little backtracking as possible, which means, hopefully, none.

Spontaneous Long/Lat navigation...
So if there is the summer wildfire (in CO in the summer? I know, right?) there is sometimes info put out about a detour. Even if I were to somehow get the long and lat on the fly, figuring out what to do with that info would be...interesting. Have I mentioned how much I love the Garmin user interface? Oh well, if there is a detour off the official route, then we just come up with a Plan B.

Side of the trail/road camping...
Someone once summed it all up in a word: stealth. Arrive late, leave early. Good thoughts, but still...

Food...
This was an obvious one, right?
What a burrito is gonna look like after 12 hours in my pack (though by that point I probably won't care what it looks like)  What does 4000 calories even look like? What sort of food does a bear NOT like?

Wildlife...
A little bit worried about mountain lions, but I doubt if my number will come up on this one...
Bears are more scavengers so I think I can manage them. This is mostly above tree line so that's good, and it is definitely NOT grizzly country. (And if I am wrong about that, please don't tell me.)


Oddly enough, at this point I am not worried about some things...even though you always want to be stronger and faster, I know that a) I am going to be slow and b) it's gonna hurt. And I already know that pushing a bike up a steep hill on a very narrow trail for a long time is soul-sucking. So once I'm out there, I can't say I didn't know it was coming!
Having already pushed up the Ten Mile Range and over Little French in three different Breck Epics means I have a bit of a taste for this kind of suffering. Though the miles and miles of unride-able baby heads will, I'm sure, take a toll. (Instead of the usual "hike-a-bike" someone referred to one section as "drag-a-bike"!)

But other than these little trifles, planning, preparation and training continues. The time is getting close. Jill starts her TD run tomorrow, so good luck to her!