Sunday, January 29, 2012

Busy Day - Narrow Trails

Trucking up the "one lane" trail in French Gulch. Step off
the trail and you sink in over 3 feet of snow.
We are in the height of "tourist season" in Breckenridge; so "weekend skijoring outings" tend to be "crowded skijoring outings" on the trails.

We set out to do a quick skijoring sprint up & back in French Gulch. As you can see in the picture to the left, the terrain was a "one lane ski trail" most of the route. We have had some good snowfall recently; so, stepping off the packed one lane trail puts you in 2-4 feet of powder. As a result, when we encountered crowds on the trail, Max, Zorro & I hopped in deep deep snow to let others pass (not that anyone ever catches us from behind - all the passes were head-on encounters with groups going the opposite direction ;-)

It is always nice to yield to others and Max & Zorro certainly don't mind jumping in 3 feet of powder! But, it does lead to lots of "stop & go" on crowded days like today. The result: each "go" (or restart) is 2 Siberians shooting out of a cannon!

Vital Stats: 5.5 miles; 62m total time; 41m skijoring time (21m "stop, yield to others & go" time on crowded trails); 20 MPH top speed; 650 feet of elevation gain. Doing a little math shows that, when moving, we were averaging an 8 MPH pace! So, it was really a day of "stop, yield to others, go & sprint" and then repeat many times...


Another nice shot of the one lane trail. Siberian heads & shoulders down
while powering uphill.
Max just finished doing a "snow angel" to cool off at our turnaround point.
The human was too slow with the camera to catch any of the snow angel; but
Max's back full of snow gives you an indication how much he enjoyed it!
Zorro preparing to "torpedo dive" into the deep snow (notice the tail straightening
out as he gets into aerodynamic "dive form").
A look back down the trail and French Gulch from our turnaround point.

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