Steep to Deep

Another great day of breaking trail in tons of soft untouched powder!

Breaking trail in about 8 inches of untouched powder - wheee!

We used a "steep to deep" strategy to get to private powder today. Yesterday's strategy was "fast to deep" as we used popular, well-used trails to get out into private powder in the backcountry. Today was a different approach - we skijored up extremely steep terrain to eventually get to some wonderful rolling terrain of untouched private powder. Nobody is going to cross country ski up the trails we took, I would never attempt it without Siberian skijoring aids to pull me up! So, the trails tend to be completely untouched - a fun trail breaking reward for a steep climb. More pictures below:

Following deer tracks as the snow gets deeper and deeper.
But, sprinkle some deer tracks on the trail and nobody notices deep :-)

More of the theme of the day: breaking trail in 8+ inches.

Here we are skijoring single file as we are on a rarely used connector trail between two of the
more established trails of our route. Note the narrow trail cutting through the snow in front
of Max. I stepped out of the narrow track once and sunk to mid-thigh in the deep snow!

A fun shot of a steep down section of trail. We are still breaking trail in about 8 inches as
you can see the airborne Siberians jumping through the snow as we sprint down.

A day of serious elevation and serious powder! 8.6 miles, 1800 feet of elevation climbed, a top speed of 16 MPH and breaking trail for about 7 miles of the outing!