Just read your post Queen and thought I should give my take. As you know I run in there quite often and so when I saw an event there I had to jump in, especially since the original marathon course would be going deep into the park and took in a lot of my route I run which is just incredible. Due to the fact my training kind of sucked leading up to it and I've run every bit of trail in there over the years anyway I opted to drop to the half-marathon which is run predominantly on the ski trails on the eastern edge of the park. That worked just fine for me in a half-marathon. The issue I want to mention is at the 11th hour the RD changed the marathon course to couple loops on the ski trails and nothing internal in the park. Still pretty but not at all the same flavor you would get if you were allowed to run the single track deep into the interior and above Lake of the Clouds. I'm glad I dropped to the half as I would have been plenty pissed.

What was being mentioned is that the course had to be altered because of beaver activity(insert jokes now). Personally, I find that hard to believe as I had just been thru that area a couple weeks prior. My thinking is that some wilderness group or the friends of the Porkies or whatever raised a fuss about an organized event going thru there.  On Sunday I will be doing a long run in there going over the original course and like a good boy I will be looking for beaver activity.  Anyway it will be interesting to see next year what the marathon course will look like but if it's just multiple loops on a ski trail it just won't rock your boat quite as much, though still pretty.

In any event I did like the half I did there and would probably do that again though I would prefer the marathon on the original course. So again if you guys decide to do it the fall color is peaking and I have a nice shack to bivouac at 1 hour away. Plenty of time to figure it out.

Again I will report back on beaver activity.in a few days.

Should add--anyone who wants to talk about beaver activity should post as I'm sure it will be a good read. 

My beaver used to be famous in another forum.

Yeah, that sounds shitty.  I'd be pissed if I had driven all that way just for ski trails.  Good thing I'm injured.    I'll be curious to see what the RD does next year.  It didn't sit well with me that he imposed a 6 hour time limit initially.

My beaver used to be famous in another forum.

 

Oh, My....

I can't help but think those forums would be way, way NSFW.