Black Sheep

I’ve been spanked all over the San Juan Mountains. In nearly four decades of wandering them thar hills, this amateur adventurer has had more than a generous tasting of the perils of the Durango high country.

I’ve watched as lightning touched down mere feet away from metal crampons during a July alpine ice climb; I’ve ridden the soft slabs of white death down an exposed chute on a January afternoon; and I’ve slurped from a giardia-ridden stream after a hot August day and too many miles in the saddle sapped my bladder (er, my hydration bladder). But last Saturday threw a new one my way, and I hope I never have to dodge that surprise knuckle ball again.

Let’s start at the beginning. It was just after 7 a.m. when I joined a posse of friends from both sides of the Juans atop Molas Pass. After shotgunning the remnants of our coffee, the four of us saddled up our two-wheeled steeds and starting climbing the Colorado Trail.

At first, the adventure went along swimmingly. The trail was in pristine shape, late season wildflowers were bathing the tundra in Technicolor and our legs and lungs were all spinning smoothly. After a couple hours, we were ahead of schedule, cruising at a comfortable altitude of more than 11,000 feet and nearing the exposed notch of Rolling Pass. That’s when the scene shifted.

I glanced up from my handlebar and over what had to be a delusion – the entire flank of Rolling Mountain seemed to be moving and swirling in the morning light. I rubbed my eyes and took a second look only to realize that my peepers had not deceived me. We were pedaling straight into mutton-palooza – roughly a thousand head of sheep were stampeding up, down and around the high-altitude tundra in the wake of our approach. That’s when I heard the barking.

My next view was the massive head and powerful jaws of an Akbash sheepdog cresting the rise. In an instant, 120 pounds of giant white canine were snarling in my face. The dog’s hulking form stood nearly 4 feet from the ground, and he was clearly not happy to see me. Thinking on my feet, I vaguely recalled a recent announcement from our friendly Forest Service. The blurb had warned that large, potentially aggressive sheepdogs would be out on their own patrolling the high country this summer. “A band of sheep is often accompanied by a pair of livestock protection dogs, which are an effective tool used by ranchers to protect sheep from predators,” the agency had noted.

I also vaguely recalled a story of two such dogs dropping and mauling a female mountain biker near Vail in 2008. Sixty stitches and a legal appeal later, she’s still waiting for resolution. And so I heeded the advice of our forest servants, dismounted and placed my bike between myself and the high altitude guardian.

“When approaching a band of sheep, allow time for the guard dogs to see you and determine you are not a threat. Remain calm. If you do not appear to be a threat, the dogs will often just watch you pass by.”

“Often” appeared to be the operative word in this case. And “calm” was a precious commodity as the large male approached me with saliva dripping from its bared teeth. Nonetheless, I held my cool and tried to stroll away from the flock and toward higher ground. When the guardian cut me little to no slack and threw a lunge in my direction, I tried a couple assertive shouts of “No!” and spiced them up with a full serving of colorful language. But my feeble defense backfired. Instead of coaxing the animal back to greener pastures, I somehow attracted more attention. Three (that’s right – three) additional dogs, all of a similar size, stopped fending off mountain lions and black bears, appeared out of nowhere and charged my way. They were all barking, snarling and ready for a fight. Seizing the moment, the first canine upped the stakes and jumped toward the gap in my bike’s main triangle.

“Do not try to outrun livestock protection dogs,” the Forest Service had advised in its friendly release. “Do not remount until you are well past the sheep.”
But as dog bite(s), rabies shots and stitches entered the realm of probability, I ignored this wisdom and saddled up, seized my inner Armstrong and punched it. My heart rate ripped through the ceiling as all four dogs gave chase and started nipping at my rear tire. But just as things looked bleakest and my body was passing into the red line, the fearsome foursome gave up. I confess that it was not my stunning sprint that sent them elsewhere, but the sight of my hapless riding pals rounding the corner and approaching the herd (Fortunately, they also managed to run/ride that fur-filled gauntlet with nothing more than bad memories to show for it).

Later that day, I was comfortably back home and reflecting on the experience with the help of my own cow/sheep dog – a Navajo shepherd (aka rez dog) who’s barely capable of defending his kibble. Prior to that high-altitude run-in, I had always been sympathetic to public lands grazing, knowing it is one of the few factors that stand between many Colorado ranchers and bankruptcy.

Through the years, I looked beyond this country’s dated public grazing policy and the fact that those sheep are grazing our shared American tundra for the same price as hamster feed. I tolerated noxious weeds and overlooked erosion and the soiling of our shared watershed all for the sake of romantic Western ideals. And I happily ignored the stripes of fresh sheep/cow crap that have squirted up onto my legs, back and neck during this antelope’s many years of wandering the backcountry.

But Saturday’s close encounter of the canine kind has me rethinking. Sheep shit is one thing, but an Akbash lunging for the unmentionables is where my patience ends. If I’m taking that dreaded heli-ride out of the high alpine, a dog bite better not be the culprit. Some perils of the San Juan Mountains are worth meeting head on; some have no place in the back of beyond.
– Will Sands