The Bear 100 Course Guide

The early climb out of Logan

The race goes uphill almost immediately, and the first big haul out of Logan is the steepest pitch of the whole day. It is tempting to hammer it on fresh legs in the cool morning, and that is the classic Bear mistake. You have a very long way to go and a ton of climbing still ahead, so hike the steep stuff with purpose, keep your effort honest, and get to the top of that first climb feeling like you have barely started. For 2026 the early miles swap onto the North Syncline singletrack, which hands you sweeping views of Logan Canyon at sunrise.

Once you are up on the range you settle into the real rhythm of the day: roll up to a high point, drop into a drainage, climb back out, repeat. The footing is mostly good singletrack through aspen and maple, but the constant grade change is what runs down your legs if you fight it. Let the climbs be climbs and the descents be descents, and stop trying to hold one pace across all of it.

The middle miles and the relentless vert

The heart of the course is the long middle stretch along the ridgelines, where most of that 20,000 feet of climb gets spent. There is no break section here, just one climb after another, and this is where a day that started easy can quietly turn into a grind. The aspens are the payoff. In late September this range lights up gold and red, and it is genuinely one of the best fall-color courses anywhere. Take it in, but keep your effort steady and keep eating, because the second half punishes anyone who spent too much up front.

Watch the temperature swing too. The afternoons can feel warm and bright, then the high points and the coming night get cold fast. Manage your layers and your fluid before you need them, not after, and keep your fueling rolling even when the climbing makes you not want to eat.

The cold night and the run to Bear Lake

You will run a full night on The Bear, and the night is where the race gets decided for a lot of people. It gets cold up high, your pace naturally sags in the dark, and the lows hit when you are tired and under-fueled. Have a real plan: a bright headlamp and a backup, warm layers in your drop bags, hot food and a hot drink at the bigger aid stations, and a pacer if the rules and your crew allow it, because company through the dark hours is worth a lot. Keep moving, keep eating, and treat the night as something you manage rather than survive.

For 2026 the finish moved to Garden City, Utah, with a fast downhill off the back of the course into the finish at Conestoga Ranch. After a night of climbing and dropping along the ridge, that final descent is a gift if you saved your legs and a long limp if you did not. The whole back half rewards patience earlier in the day, which is the theme of this entire race.

Aid stations, crew, drop bags, and cutoffs

The Bear has aid stations spread along the course with water, an endurance drink, and gels, chews, and waffles, and drop bags get shuttled to the major checkpoints. For 2026 the aid network was reworked: Peter Sinks and Burnt Fork came in for a few of the old stations, with a water stop in between, and Franklin Basin moved to a bigger parking site for better crew access. Crew can meet you at the designated points, and one pacer bib comes with registration, so plan your crew and pacer handoffs around the current aid map.

The overall cutoff is 36 hours, finish by about 6:00 PM Saturday, with intermittent cutoffs at aid stations along the way. Those checkpoint cutoffs are the ones that catch people, especially overnight, so build your splits backward from the current official cutoff chart with a real buffer instead of planning to claw time back late.

Pace by grade, not by the watch

Your flat-ground pace is meaningless on The Bear. The course is up or down almost the entire way, so what matters is grade-adjusted effort. Hold a steady, sustainable output up the climbs, hike the steep pitches without guilt, and let the descents come to you instead of attacking them early. The runners who blow up here almost always do it by running the early climbs too hard because they felt easy. Use a grade-adjusted pace to turn your real fitness into honest climbing and descending targets so you are not cooking yourself in the first quarter.

Build a vert-aware, night-aware finish prediction

Do not guess your Bear finish off a road or flat 100 time. About 20,000 feet of climb, the altitude, and a slow cold night all add real hours, and most finishers are out there well into the 24 to 36 hour range. A vert-aware finish prediction that accounts for this course profile gives you a realistic window, then you can work backward into the intermittent cutoffs and know how much buffer you actually carry into the night instead of hoping.

Reality-check your goal before you commit

If you want to know how a recent race lines up against a mountain hundred like this, run it through a race-equivalent calculator first. It is an honest gut check on whether your goal time fits your current fitness on this kind of vert, and it is a lot cheaper to find out now than at mile 70 in the dark.

Carbs: steady, trained, and through the night

For an effort this long, aim for around 60 to 90 grams of carbohydrate per hour, and only push the high end if your gut is trained for it. The real challenge on a hundred is not the first ten hours, it is hours twenty and thirty, when your appetite is gone and the cold and fatigue make eating feel like a chore. Use a glucose-plus-fructose mix so you can absorb more, rehearse your hourly number on long training runs and back-to-backs, and lean on warm food and a hot drink at the bigger aid stations overnight to keep the calories going down.

Sodium and fluid: plan for the swing and the gaps

Bias your sodium toward 500 to 700 milligrams per liter of fluid, more if you are a heavy or salty sweater, and adjust it for how warm the afternoon actually runs. The legs between aid stations on The Bear are long and mountainous, so carry enough fluid and calories to cover the gaps rather than rationing to the next station and showing up empty. Weigh yourself before and after a long mountain run to find your real sweat rate, then build your plan around your own number instead of a generic one.