Wide, Narrow, Deep

The trails on today's skijor outing went from wide to narrow to deep as we toured around Indiana Creek.

"Wait? What for?" ask my inquisitive pair looking back to question my command.
Meanwhile you can see my left arm battling tree branches trying to clear a path for me to proceed.
Some of the hazards you encounter when your lead dogs are under 2 feet tall and you are almost
6 feet tall (e.g., they went under the branches just fine while I ran into them :-)

As is usually the case, the trail started packed & wide at Indiana Creek:

Putting our shoulders into the harness to haul the human up the packed & wide start
to the outing.

Today the "packed & wide" stretch of trail ended after 3/4 of a mile and then we were on a narrow single track for about the next 2.5 miles. If you step out of the track, you sink in snow and cannot keep pace; so it was single file skijoring for this 2.5 mile stretch:

Max jogging point as you can see the narrow trail winding through the forest.

Extended single file skijoring always leads to taking turns running in point.
Zorro leading us along as Max takes a break in 2nd slot.

We never fail to "out ski" the existing tracks in Indiana Creek. A normal cross country skier does not go as far as Siberian Powered Skijoring. We did a loop in Indiana Creek, so did not re-use the narrow single track for the return route. Instead we were breaking trail to laying fresh tracks for over 3.5 miles of the outing:

Powering along in deep snow far back in Indiana Creek.

Continuing to set our own track as we loop down through the "Indiana Creek Gulch" to
return instead of going back on the single track.

Eventually we connected back to the original packed & wide trail to arrive at the trailhead:

Zooming to the finish of the run for the day.

The complex terrain of Indiana Creek always leads to shorter than average outings; but everyone is all smiles after completing a complex run: 7.3 miles with 800 feet of elevation climbed and a top speed of 17 MPH.

2013/2014 Season to Date: 122 days on the trails covering 1052.2 miles with 122,000 feet of elevation climbed.