All Conditions

A fun day from fast packed to breaking trail in French Gulch!

"Yes - a GREAT day!" say the happy brothers circling back to me when I called out time
to turnaround from this side trail and head back to the trailhead.

We had the full range of snow conditions on the outing today...

It started on the heavily used and fast packed lower section of French Gulch:

Zoom we go! Just enough packed snow to feel comfortable opening the throttle and letting
the brothers fly!

A little further into French Gulch and it transitioned into slightly used packed powder:

Wheeee - great conditions to keep the throttle open and sprint along!

Most of the way back into French Gulch and we were setting the trail in 2-3 inches of untouched snow:

Cruising through the final meadow of the gulch and nobody but us Siberians have been
here recently. Setting the trail for others to use...

We skijored the entire gulch (quickly) and still had lots of time to keep going. So, we started the steep climb into the forest towards French Pass. Very few ever attempt this climb which means it is almost always a fun trail breaking workout:

Love breaking trail! Where is everybody? :)

The reward for starting the steep climb to French Pass - MOOSE sighting!!!!!

"Moose, moose, MOOSE - let's keep going this way!" say the intense moose watchers.
We watched the big, brown moose body move away from us in the trees to the left.
Once she was out of sight, we continued the climb a little further by going to the right.
"But.... the moose went left!" exclaimed my shocked partners when I instructed to go right :)

An out & back in French Gulch with fast packed, breaking trail and every condition in between: 8.2 miles with 1000 feet of elevation climbed and a top speed of 19 MPH.

2014/2015 Season to Date: 100 days on the trails covering 865.6 miles with 92,050 feet of elevation climbed.