The Side Effect

"Hi! We found some great powder to
skijor in today!" exclaims happy Max.

The side effect of beautiful snow covered trees.

The trees look so beautiful and serene when they are covered in fresh snow. A calm winter wonderland as we skijor around the trails. But... the side effect is a doozy! Combine wind gusts with snow covered trees and what do you get? A snow dump - right on top of you. Brrr. Below is a sequence of images for the handful of "wind gusting snow dumps" we skijored through today.

Surrounded by snow covered trees and here comes a gust of wind.
"Not so bad!" we all think at this point....

Starting to become a whiteout of snow. Zorro pausing a bit, Max still powering forward.

Whiteout... Zorro almost stopped to ride out the dump of snow, Max still powering forward...

"Suck it up kid - this way!" calls Max as Zorro listens and continues forward in the whiteout.
Note the theme in all photos - Max still powering forward. I have never seen whiteout, wind
driven or natural, cause even a pause in Max's frame of mind.
"It's just snow - let's go!" says Max.

For most of today's route, we were treated to wonderful fresh snow on a mostly unused set of trails, as shown below. But, boy, did those "wind blowing snow off the trees" whiteouts send a shiver through the human!

How we spent most of the day: either laying fresh tracks in a few inches of untouched snow
or breaking trail in much deeper snow - surrounded by snow covered trees all along the trail.
So peaceful until the occasional wind gust dumped the tree snow on top of us!

Stats for today's outing: 6.8 miles with 1650 feet of elevation climbed and a top speed of 19 MPH. Not a particularly long outing (distance-wise) but a lot of elevation and a lot of breaking trail!