Shoulder Corduroy

Zipping along in leftover corduroy on the right shoulder of this wide snowmobile trail.

Lots of snowmobile tracks going along this trail but look at that wonderful
span of untouched corduroy we found to ride on the right shoulder!!!

Today found us skijoring snowmobile trails on Walton Peak at Rabbit Ears Pass. There is a "main trail" that gets groomed a few times a week and then lots of side snow and open meadows for snowmobiles to go explore off the main trail. We like to skijor this main trail as the grooming keeps it from getting too bumpy as you'd find on the side trails. But, the groomer had not been out on the trail for at least a day or two; so, most of the "groomer corduroy" was missing from lots of snowmobiles riding the trail. Thus, most of the outing found us on the following conditions:

Running in snowmobile tracks along the main trail with pretty much all
of the recent groomer corduroy missing.

But, as you saw in the first photo, we found the occasional wonderful stretch where the snowmobiles had converged to the middle of the trail and one or both shoulders had some great leftover corduroy. Jack & Rudy know what to do when they get my skis on a corduroy - floor it!!!

Nice span of corduroy under Jack; so I moved my right leg behind
him, shifted my weight right and, zoom, off we went :)

Now come along for a video example of what I've been talking about. This clip goes along with the first photo above. Just enough leftover corduroy on the right shoulder for us to safely uncork the skijoring engine. Wheeee!

[watch on youtube if no video loads below]

Today's comedic interlude from the comedians, Jack & Rudy, is a really funny one - leap frogging rodent dives! The interlude starts with Jack hopping off trail for rodents as we were jogging. Rudy was to the left and, when he noticed Jack lunge off trail for rodents, he did a beautiful swan dive in front of me to Jack's location. Keep in mind we were jogging when this started - I almost smacked into Rudy as I was trying to stop!

Beautiful high arching rodent swan dive from Rudy as I'm attempting
to stop and not smack into him. Note a bit of Jack's head on the right
edge of the photo as he is already dunked in the snow searching for rodents.

Rudy landed his dive in front of Jack which caused Jack to lunge forward in case Rudy was onto some rodents he may have scared forward under the snow from his first lunge:

BOOM, Rudy just landed his rodent dive.
"Hey bro, are they up there? Here I come!" comes Jack with a little
dive forward of his own.

But, it turns out Jack did NOT land next to Rudy to search for rodents. Nope, Jack  leap frogged Rudy and went rodent searching again. This did not go unnoticed by Rudy who then leapt up to dive again to where Jack had leap frogged. 

"Hey! You leapt past me! Here I come! Incoming!" goes re-diving
Rudy to join Jack's leap frog.

Despite a hilarious sequence of leap frogging rodent dives, neither kid came up from the snow with a rodent in his mouth (as Rudy did recently). Oh well, nice try guys :)

Back to the trailhead for end of run treats. Which was more fun, zooming on the shoulder corduroy or leap frogging rodent dives? 

"We loved BOTH!!!" says the happy & proud kids.

I, of course, enjoyed the shoulder corduroy the most - so much softer on my knees than frozen snowmobile tracks! 9.3 miles traveled with 900 feet of elevation climbed and a top speed of 22 MPH.

2023/2024 Season to Date: 110 days on the trails covering 941.4 miles with 91,900 feet of elevation climbed.