White Christmas

Max & Zorro plowing through the powder
as we approach our finish at French
Gulch. And, yes, that is a Santa Hat on
my head! (click for a larger view)

Oh boy did Santa deliver! We got a dump of fresh snow late Christmas Eve and into this morning and we awoke to a White Christmas Treat!

No time for presents, we had to get to the trails to be the fresh tracks in all this new snow. It was worth it - we were breaking trail in 6-12 inches of fresh powder for most of the outing today! The outing had 3 sections of trail conditions:

(1) Traveling up the "Barney Ford" side of the Sally Barber Mine trail. This section was an untouched winter wonderland with us breaking trail the entire route in 6-10 inches.

(2) Traveling down the "French Gulch" side of the Sally Barber Mine trail. This section had an existing set of parallel ski tracks - darn, someone beat us to the new snow on this section of trail! Oh well, existing tracks mean "go fast", even if it is just a single set of new tracks (see the video below).

(3) Traveling out & back in French Gulch. Oh boy, no existing tracks again - breaking trail in 8-12 inches the entire route.

Clearly Max & Zorro were good boys this year as Santa delivered a real Siberian Treat for us to skijor in today.

Breaking trail uphill towards Sally Barber Mine.

Still breaking trail as we crest up to meet Sally Barber Mine. Pretty snow covered trees with blue
sky starting to break through on the horizon.

What? An existing pair of ski tracks on the down trail from Sally Barber to French Gulch!
Well, guess we'd better sprint then if we have existing tracks (even if there is still quite a bit
of powder). This is the same section of trail where we hit 24 MPH last Saturday. What a
difference a few days and 12 inches of new snow can make!
[watch on youtube if no video show below]

Back to breaking trail and laying fresh tracks in French Gulch.

Whoa - chest deep for both Max & Zorro! Wheee what a Christmas Present!!!!

Totals for today's outing: 7.1 miles, 900 feet of elevation gain, top speed of 16 MPH and breaking trail in 6-12 inches for over 5.5 of the miles! What Fun!