Passing 1300 Miles

We surpassed 1300 miles of skijoring for the 2013/2014 season today.

Wow, I never thought 1300 miles was possible; but Max & Zorro certainly showed me this year!

Paused at the high point of our run on day 2 of the outing.
I am taking in the magnificent views of Colorado around us.
Max & Zorro are taking in the views of the active wildlife off to our right.
There is a huge cliff in front of us, so this was the turnaround point of the day too :-)

We reached 1300 miles by putting together a 2 day outing to Rabbit Ears Pass yesterday and today. A review of our 2 day run to record skijoring miles below:

Day 1: Sun Day Sunday

It was a bright sunny day for our Sunday outing at Rabbit Ears and the trail we chose to run is wide & open for miles & miles:

Following snowmobile tracks at the start of our sunny Sunday outing.
May 18th and the terrain is still "all white" as far as the eye can see!

Many miles later and now following a solo snowmobile track across the wide open and
snow covered terrain.

It was May and the sun was shining, so the top layer of trail was slushy all day; but that did not curb anyone's enthusiasm:

"We are on snow on May 18th. Sun, schmun & slush schmush - we are having a blast!" declare my
ecstatic partners at our turnaround point of the outing.

Tally for day 1: 8.3 miles with 600 feet of elevation climbed (a "flat" trail by our standards :-)

Day 2: Shade Day Monday

Our route on Monday was a 180 from our Sunday approach. We took our favorite "trail through the forest" at Rabbit Ears and, thus, were in the shade most of the day:

Most of the day looked like this photo: rolling & shaded trail winding through the forest.

Our video highlight from the trip is a short clip of us cruising through the forest in the shade - wheeee!

[watch on youtube if no video loads below]

The only downside of Monday's route is it has two steep elevation climbs that you must ascend before getting onto the endless, rolling & shaded run through the forest. No problem, elevation is just more exercise:

"No problem at all! A little elevation for miles of shade & snow - we'll take it any day!"
say the happy pair clearly enjoying a May 19th on great snow!

Tally for day 2: 7.9 miles with 900 feet of elevation climbed.

Total for our 2 day outing at Rabbit Ears: 16.2 miles with 1500 feet of elevation climbed. A pretty amazing amount of mileage for May 18-19.

2013/2014 Season to Date: 150 days on the trails covering 1300.5 miles with 148,400 feet of elevation climbed. Wow!