Bears Ears Ultra Course Guide

The early climbs: fast road, then up onto the high trails

The opening miles are some of the most runnable on the course, rolling on gravel and forest road before the singletrack tips up and switchbacks you onto the high country around Robertson Pasture and Red Ledges. It feels easy early, and that is exactly the trap. You are already at altitude and you have a long day ahead, so this is the place to hold back, hike the steep pitches, and let your effort stay boring while everyone around you spends matches they want back later.

Up on the Skyline trails the course tops out near 10,700 feet with huge views toward the Bears Ears buttes, Monument Valley, and the La Sals. The footing up there is good in stretches and rougher in others, and the air is thin enough that even gentle grades make you breathe hard. Run the high country by feel, not by your watch.

The technical descents: loose, rocky, and quad-eating

What makes Bears Ears bite is the descending. Some of the drops off the high trails are steep and loose, dropping a couple thousand feet over just a few miles on rock that rolls under your feet. It is the kind of downhill that is genuinely ankle-threatening if you bomb it tired, and it is where badly paced runners come apart. If you trashed your legs on the early climbs, those descents turn brutal.

Practice loose, technical descending before race day, and practice it on fresh legs and tired legs both. Being able to keep moving downhill late, in control, when your quads are already cooked and you are 8,000-plus feet up, is honestly what separates a good Bears Ears day from a long sufferfest.

The hot canyons and the remote middle

The course dips down into lower canyon sections where the walls trap heat, the trail can get faint and overgrown, and a hot year can push temperatures into the 90s even when the high country stays cool. There is a stretch through the Tuerto area that runners single out as the hardest part of the day: undulating, brushy, and exposed, with a short, ladder-steep rocky climb that stops you dead. This is the part of the course you respect and plan for, not the part you wing.

Aid out here is genuinely remote, with some stations only reachable by 4x4, so the gaps between them are long. Carry enough water and food to get yourself across the dry, exposed sections with margin to spare. The mistake is rationing to the next aid and showing up empty in the heat. Fill up, carry more than feels necessary, and treat self-sufficiency as part of the race.

The long climb home

Late in the 50 mile the course makes you earn the finish with another long climb back up toward 10,000-plus feet before the final, mostly downhill-to-flat run in on smoother singletrack and forest road. By this point you are deep in the day, the altitude has been grinding on you for hours, and that climb is exactly where the late-race lows hit. If you paced the front patiently and kept eating, you climb it steady and run the descent home. If you overcooked the first half, this is where the wheels come off.

Know this climb is coming and save something for it. The runners who finish strong here are the ones who treated the whole first half as setup for this last push, not the ones who raced the opening miles.

Pace by grade and altitude, not by the watch

Your flat-ground pace is close to meaningless on these climbs at this altitude. What matters is grade-adjusted effort that you can actually hold up high, so settle into a steady output and hike the steep pitches without feeling guilty about it. The classic Bears Ears mistake is running the runnable early miles too hard because the legs feel great, then paying for it on the technical descents and the long climb home. Use a grade-adjusted pace to turn your real fitness into honest climbing and descending targets, and then shade them slower for the altitude if you live near sea level.

Build an altitude- and vert-aware finish prediction

Do not guess your Bears Ears finish off a road time or a low-elevation trail result. The 10,000-plus feet of climbing, the technical descents, the heat in the canyons, and the thin air all add real time. A vert-aware finish prediction gives you a realistic window and lets you work backward into the aid-station cutoffs, so you actually know how much buffer you have at each remote checkpoint instead of finding out the hard way.

Carbs: steady, trained, and easy to get down

Aim for around 60 to 90 grams of carbohydrate per hour, and only push the higher end if your gut is trained for it. Altitude blunts your appetite and slows your stomach, so favor intake that goes down easy and keep it steady instead of gambling on big late doses you will not want to eat. Practice your exact race-day carb rate on long runs, ideally with some climbing, so 70 to 90 grams an hour feels normal and not like an experiment you are running on a remote mountain.

Sodium and fluid: carry for the gaps and the heat

Lean toward the high end on sodium in the hot canyon sections, often around 500 to 700 milligrams per liter of fluid, and more if you are a heavy or salty sweater. The bigger point on this course is fluid logistics: the aid is remote and far apart, so carry enough to get across the long, dry, exposed stretches with margin instead of rationing to the next station. Weigh yourself before and after a hot long run to find your real sweat rate, then build the plan around your own number and the spacing in the race guide.