Siberian Day

It was 1 degree out when we started at the trailhead today. Add light falling snow to that plus a slight wind with occasional gusts and what do you get? If you guessed "cold" - wrong.  What you get is a Siberian Perfect Day...

"Yep, 1 degree + snow + wind and I am rolling a snow angel. A perfect Siberian Hot Tub
on the trails today!" demonstrates goofy Max.

You will be shocked to hear that we did not run into a single person on the trails today. A busy Sunday in "spring break season" yet nobody braved the elements to ski the backcountry with us. "Where is everyone, it is a lovely day!" said Max & Zorro.

No people means no tracks, so it was the 3 of us laying "fresh tracks" on the trails all day. We progressed through 3 types of terrain: (1) light new snow on wide trails near the trailhead; to (2) 1-3 inches on narrow "single track" trails as we made it a bit further; and finally (3) breaking trail in 5-10 inches once we out-skied all the existing tracks. A visual summary of the progression below:

Near the Indiana Creek trailhead - laying fresh tracks along a wide packed trail.

The terrain quickly progressed to a narrow single track after the first mile or so.
We were on single track trails for about 1/2 to 2/3 of the outing - a lot of fun
to skijor in this configuration, but it does slow us down a bit.

Still in a single track and Zorro's turn to run in lead - whee.

Existing tracks all gone - it is just Max & Zorro blazing trail now...

Deeper & deeper as we went further. Tall Max breaking trail and towing the human.
Shorter Zorro just breaking trail with a loose gangline - "Hey, I don't have those long
legs like Max - it is enough for me to break for myself without towing the human!"
argues Zorro :-)

Beautiful fresh snow all day - I wonder why nobody else was on the trails today :-)  8 chilly miles with 850 feet of elevation climbed and a top speed of 18 MPH.