Sunrise

Happy boys finishing off an early morning skijor!

"We have fun ANY time of day we are running on snow!" says the happy trio.

We start this morning's skijor a few minutes after sunrise and were first on the trails to lay fresh tracks on the Sally Barber and French Gulch trails. Early morning freshies - what a treat.

The first 1/2 of the outing was just Jack & Rudy towing me up, over and down the Sally Barber Mine Trail. Here's a fun "sunrise photo" of the mine:

Laying fresh tracks as we crest on the trail at the historic mine.

Jack & Rudy are ridiculously fast going up, over and down the Sally Barber trail. I was wondering if we were going to make record time on this trail when we got distracted by a moose trough going from the trail into the trees. We had to stop and inspect the trough, of course, so it wasn't a record fast outing given the pause for moose inspection :)

Jack noticed the trough first and was deep into it before Rudy or I even noticed it!
But, Rudy was quick to see what Jack was onto and hopped through the
deep snow to look for moose too (we didn't see any).

Done with the Sally Barber Mine Trail and it was time to join with Zorro for an out & back in French Gulch. It was still near sunrise, so we got some "early morning" fun in French Gulch too.

Cool shot of the sun just starting to come over the mountains in front of us
as we lay fresh tracks in French Gulch!

I said, "out & back", didn't I? So, you know what that means from the crazy kids at the turnaround point. It was 2 degrees F when we started the outing and -2 F when we finished. Cold enough for Jack to forego rolling snow angels? Ha, it's never too cold for that! Love the frosted beard and mustache on Zorro in this shot:

"Never too cold to roll!" declares goofball Jack.
"Never to cold to eat snow!" says goofy Rudy.
"Oh those kids!" adds 'frosted face' Zorro :)

Once the kids were upright again, it was time for a fast return leg in French Gulch. Come along for a short glimpse into the morning's fun:

[watch on youtube if no video loads below]

Finally, you may have noticed Jack far right of Zorro & Rudy at points in the video (and as I have shown below). The pattern for French Gulch is two set tracks on each side of the trail and the set track is really only "2 Siberians wide". So, what you see is Zorro & Rudy in one track while Jack is in the other track. Smart guys figure out how to best configure themselves for fast fun!

Zorro & Rudy in one track while Jack is the the other track.

A beautiful "sunrise skijor" laying fresh tracks on Sally Barber and French Gulch: 8.1 miles traveled with 700 feet of elevation climbed and a top speed of 21 MPH.

2019/2020 Season to Date: 99 days on the trails covering 676.4 miles with 62,050 feet of elevation climbed.