Breaking Trail to 400 Miles!

Max, Zorro and I passed 400 miles skijoring this 2011/2012 season today! Woo Hoo - and we've still got 3 months left in the season... Do I sense 800 miles for the season???

Funny sequence of images below... We were on Baldy Mountain today and most of the trail was "one Siberian wide", so we needed to skijor in "single file" mode. Max is usually in lead (front) 2/3 to 3/4 of the time when we are in single file configuration. But, Zorro is in front occasionally to share the load. As we were cruising up a section of trail with Zorro in lead, I decided to snap a picture of the little boy in lead. So, free my hand to take out the camera and... "No way are you going to photograph me not in lead!" declares Max and decides to take over the lead position. The left photo below is Max in takeover - Zorro was in lead when I hit the camera button; but by the time the camera snapped, Max was already shoulder-to-shoulder taking over the lead slot. The right photo is seconds after the left - Max in front.

"Move over kid, I don't get photo'd in 2nd!" declares Max.

"Order reinstated - go ahead & snap the camera," says Max.

We had a nice little dump of new snow overnight. As a result, we were breaking trail in 4-8 inches of fresh, untouched powder for the first 7+ miles of our outing. The last mile (approaching the Boreas Pass winter trailhead) had existing tracks. Our route was from the Baldy Mtn winter trailhead, up & across Baldy to Boreas Pass (at Bakers Tank) and then up a bit on Boreas before cruising down to the Boreas winter trailhead. Most of the trek across Baldy was on skinny, one-Siberian-wide trails. So, single file skijoring for about 1/3 the trip and breaking trail in 4-8 inches for 7+ miles made for a fun workout on the mountains today!

Vital Stats: 8.3 miles; 108m total time; 93m skijoring time (15m for a short break and then "crowd avoidance" as we approached the busy Boreas trailhead); 18 MPH top speed; 900 feet of elevation climbed.

Zorro doing a "head dunk" in the snow at our break point. Max looking on and...

Max taking over Zorro's "head hole" and doing a full body snow angel in the snow

A look back at our fresh tracks high up on Boreas Pass. It's so fun to be the
first tracks after a fresh snowfall!