Risk Reward

It was a "risk/reward" day attempting to skijor French Gulch...

"The risk was WORTH IT!" exclaim extremely happy Max & Zorro on great snow far back
in French Gulch.

The risk? Well, lower French Gulch dries out fast this time of year. We got a nice dump of new snow on Tuesday and we hoped it had lasted until this morning. Well, not really - see below:

Yikes! We are risking skijoring this narrow ribbon of snow to get far back in French Gulch.
Zorro riding the ribbon with me (Zorro will keep his toes on snow at all costs :)
Max dropping out onto the ground to keep us going.

The reward? Well, we knew far back and higher up in French Gulch would be worth the effort to get there. We found a beautiful spring crust to trot along for miles far back in the gulch. The crust was not hard enough to support a sprint (Max & Zorro would punch through with sprint force) but was plenty hard enough to support a trot. So, Max & Zorro automatically slowed to a gentle gallop as we toured the great terrain in upper French Gulch.

So worth it to get to this!

The additional reward? Rodent dives! We were skijoring along when suddenly Max & Zorro slowed as something caught their attention under the snow crust. Both went into "hunting mode" and did their fox-like rodent dives to puncture the crust and dig for rodents!

Zorro has completed his dive to puncture the crust so he can dig for rodents.
Max in a beautiful "rodent dive" as he is coming in to puncture and dig too.

Today's comical video is the rodent dive & dig. I've put the video into slow motion so you can watch Max & Zorro's perfect dives to digs. A 10-point dive for each on the olympic scale :)

[watch on youtube if no video loads below]

Risky down low but so rewarding up high! 8.9 miles traveled with 1000 feet of elevation climbed.

2016/2017 Season to Date: 122 days on the trails covering 1019.1 miles with 108,000 feet of elevation climbed.