Fast to Deep

We were planning an 11 mile outing today; but we covered 9.3 miles instead.

Having plans interrupted by deep snow is always an acceptable compromise!

We started on the Sally Barber Mine trail and all was as expected - a very fast trail:

Cresting over Sally Barber Mine early in the morning.
Clear skies all over, it was developing into a beautiful sunny day.

Zooooming along the Sally Barber Trail - the fast trail we expected to reach 11 miles
for the day.

After going up & over Sally Barber Mine, we headed out & up French Gulch. As with the Sally Barber trail, we were flying up the French Gulch trail. All the makings of a fast day covering lots of mileage until "Powder POW", we outskied all existing tracks and found ourselves in an untouched meadow of endless powder far back in French Gulch. Nothing wrong with having the day's plan trimmed by trail breaking fun...

From a fast trail to a POW trail in a manner of seconds!
A nice view of Max & Zorro powering through the powder as we wind into the trees
in front of us.

All smiles as we hang a right to loop around the meadow and continue the powder plowing.

Still breaking trail through the meadow of powder as we head back towards the
French Gulch trailhead.

After looping through the meadow of powder, it was back onto the well-traveled main French Gulch trail and back to a fun & fast pace:

Sprinting along French Gulch.
"Fast to Deep to Fast" was the profile of the day.

A "fast - deep - fast" outing covering 9.3 miles with 1050 feet of elevation climbed and a top speed of 19 MPH.

2013/2014 Season to Date: 114 days on the trails covering 982.4 miles with 114,250 feet of elevation climbed.