Wipeout

A beautiful & fast day in French Gulch today with one minor oops to see in the video of the day.

"Everything OK back there?" asks concerned Max coming to check.
"I'll survey the terrain for what we are missing until you get up!" states less than concerned Zorro.
(he really would be concerned if I was hurt; he has already determined all is OK)

Today's video clip is for all the people who always ask me, "How do you do that with sled dogs? Don't you fall & wipeout all the time?!?" The truth is we (or I) rarely fall; but the truth also is that it does happen. We have about 4-8 total wipeouts each season - that is pretty good considering we are on the trails over 100 times. Yet, it does happen. The video below is "what happens" when the skier of the skijor team wipes out...

[watch on youtube if no video loads below]

"What happened to cause the wipeout?" you might ask. Well, I would like to pretend my left ski caught something under the snow; but I cannot prove that. Unfortunately most of our rare wipeouts are because the human is not paying attention (I am taking in the scenery or watching the amazing athletes in front of me). Oh well, even Olympic skiers fall now & then....

Anyway, back to the real outing - a beautiful & fast day in French Gulch with the usual range of conditions:

A fast & packed trail closer to the trailhead.

Narrowing & less packed the further and higher we went.

Eventually narrowing to "one Siberian wide" trail as Zorro jogs "out of track" in the
powder next to the trail.

Until finally nobody has made it as far as my pals as we are breaking trail at the
far reaches of French Gulch.

Other than the one wipeout, a fast & fun day covering 8.7 miles with 950 feet of elevation climbed and a top speed of 21 MPH.

2013/2014 Season to Date: 118 days on the trails covering 1018.9 miles with 118,150 feet of elevation climbed.