Sprint Day

Short Sprint Day around Sally Barber

Today we followed up yesterday's 14 mile outing with a short sprint day in & around Sally Barber Mine. Nancy has a new iPhone 4S - so she can now try and catch videos of us at the beginning and end of our outings. The video above is a nice shot of our "take off" from Barney Ford side of Sally Barber as we sprint uphill to the Sally Barber Mine.

Today's Route: our route was intentionally short today... (1) sprint up the Sally Barber trail from Barney Ford to the Sally Barber Mine; (2) hang a right at the mine and start up Nightmare on Baldy trail; (3) take the lower loop of Nightmare and sprint back to Sally Barber Mine; (4) say, "that was fun, repeat" and repeat #2 & #3; (5) take a relatively long break (for the length of this outing) at the mine as we wait for a group of loose dogs to get far ahead of us down the trail; (6) sprint down from Sally Barber Mine to the French Gulch trailhead.

You may ask, "Why is the trail called 'Nightmare on Baldy', that sounds scary!" Well, its name is not due to steepness, as you might guess. The name represents how narrow this trail is as you weave between trees. In many sections you are cruising between tight groups of trees, the trail no more than 3-4 feet wide. Needless to say, this is a challenge to skijor through the down sections (while attached to your Siberian turbo jets) - a really good test of your skiing skills!

Vital Stats: 6.1 total miles; 72m total time, 58m skijoring time (14m of various "waiting on loose dogs" time); 21 MPH top speed; 700 feet of elevation gain.

Sprinting up the Sally Barber Mine trail. Notice all 4 back legs are outstreched
in "sprinting form"!

Waiting for the group of loose dogs to get sufficiently far in front of us.
Might as well take a pretty shot of Sally Barber Mine while waiting.....