Seeing wildlife in their natural habitat is a truly special experience and the majority of interactions with bears don’t involve any aggression on the bears part. In most cases, a bear will act curious, will completely ignore you, or will simply run away.

Actual attacks are surprisingly rare. But as trail runners, our speed puts us at an increased risk for sudden encounters with bears which can provoke a defensive reaction, and the large amount of time that many of us spend in the backcountry and particularly in grizzly habitat also puts us at an increased risk.

So in this post, I’ll discuss how we can avoid potentially dangerous conflicts with bears, how to tell the difference between black bears and grizzlies, a subspecies of the brown bear, and what to do in the rare case of an attack. Most of what I’ll be recommending is based on advice from Parks Canada as well as the authoritative book by Stephen Herrero which I’d highly recommend reading for yourself.

When considering a headlamp for trail running, there are a ton of options to choose from. In this post, I’ll review what I personally look for in a headlamp to help you choose the right headlamp for you.

I’ll start by going over some of the features that separate the most common headlamps, including both the features that I’d consider absolutely essential as well as those that are just nice to haves. I’ll talk about a few different use cases where some of these different features might be important. And lastly, I’ll recommend a couple of headlamps that I’ve had good experiences with that yo can use as a basis for comparison when choosing your own.

In this post, I’m going to discuss my 5 favourite trail running apps for navigation and route planning, specifically for trail running. I’m not going to go into too much detail on how to use each app, but instead will provide a more high level overview of the features of both the free and paid versions of each, and some possible use cases.

I’ll also highlight a handful of other apps you might want to check out as well which while not on my primary list are all very useful in their own way.

Winter can still be a great time to hit the trails. But when the temperatures drop and the snow begins to fall in the mountains, the gear we use needs to change as well.

In this post, I cover some of the winter trail running gear that I rely on, along with a few tips for staying safe in the snow.

The SwissPeaks Trail 360k is a trail running race that travels more than 360 km (224 miles) across the Swiss Alps, climbing more than 26,000 metres (87,000 feet) from Oberwald to the shores of Lake Geneva.

Runners have up to 160 hours to complete the race, refuelling at the 31 minor aid stations, with the option to sleep at any of the 6 major life bases along the way.