9 Trails in One

Back home after our extreme, crazy outing. Look who's
not tired!!! Silly Max glancing at the camera, "Well that
was fun, now what?" The human, on the other hand,
is exhausted!

Today is my birthday and Max & Zorro decided to give me an extreme skijoring outing as a present.

Extreme would have been nice, it turned out to be an ultra-extreme, exhausting & crazy outing!  Thanks guys ;-)

Our goal was to do a 10+ mile tour and stay at elevations over 10,500 for as much as the way as possible. Why 10,500? Well, elevations at/above 10,500 is where the snow is best. Below this, the trails are worn over and in need of some fresh snow.

How did we accomplish this goal? By connecting 9 different backcountry trails. Each trail by itself is an "outing" - how did I let these two talk me into doing 9???

The Route: (1) up Sally Barber Mine trail [packed/moderate]; (2) up Nightmare on Baldy [packed/difficult]; (3) across Baldy Mtn [packed/easy]; (4) up Forest Service Rd 5281B [powder/moderate]; (5) break trail up unnamed trail to hop from FR5281B to Bakers Tank trail [deep powder/difficult]; (6) up Bakers Tank trail [packed/moderate]; (7) up Boreas Pass Rd [packed/moderate]; (8) break trail, via the path to Dyersville ghost town, down to connect to Indiana Creek [deep powder/difficult]; (9) sprint down Indiana Creek trail to the Indiana Creek winter trailhead [packed/easy].

That's 9 different trails with 3 extremely difficult sections sprinkled throughout the route. All the moderate sections - well, those were all uphill. Suffice it to say that I am beat. Boy do Max & Zorro know how to throw a wild birthday bash!

Vital Stats: 11.1 miles; 135m total time; 115m skijoring time (20m of breaks and studying the GPS for route alignment); 21 MPH top speed; 1350 feet of elevation gain.

We just broke trail out of Dyersville ghost town and onto the Indiana Creek
trail - Max is lined up and ready to sprint down this last leg. The 3 of us classify
this as an "easy" trail, so if it looks hard to you, then imagine what we traversed
on the other 8 legs of our outing!

Same view as above, but a different husky in the photo. Zorro is now ready to
sprint down the last leg, Max is getting one last "sniff" in the deep powder to
the left before rejoining Zorro on the trail for the final sprint.

A fun "takeoff video" at the Sally Barber trailhead.