Still Going

Yesterday may have been May 29th; but we were still going on skis at Rabbit Ears Pass!

Happy brothers looking back in approval of the day's outing as we approached the
Rabbit Ears Pass Landmark.

We have never been "on skis" this late in May as the best we have done was be on the sled in late May (you can hop off the sled and/or take the sled over rocks, you cannot do this on skis :-)

Unfortunately, though, the "end of the season" was visible all around us on our short run yesterday. Rabbit Ears Pass has the best snowpack in Colorado at this point in May; so the deterioration of Rabbit Ears is clearly marking the end of our incredible 2013/2014 season. Come along for what is probably one of our last outings of the season:

At the start of our run as you see a narrow & shallow trail with exposed ground taking over
the terrain. As you can see behind Max & Zorro, the snow we were on was deep, heavy and
wet slush. Max has moved to the right to get in less slush and tow me up the trail while Zorro
has a loose gangline as he works to move just himself up the slush trail.

Most of the day looked like this, at best - a narrowing trail with ground closing in on both side.
"Leave my snow alone!" declares Zorro giving the encroaching dirt patch to the right a disapproving
glance. "Mushy, slushy - tow yourself!" says Max falling loose on his side of the gangline as he
tries to find a consistent patch of trail to run on.

But, we did find the occasional stretch of wide open & snow covered terrain. Every such stretch got everyone excited and we put the pedal to the metal as you can see in the video below. If you turn the volume up high, the "clicks" you hear throughout the video are "slush bombs" flying off Max & Zorro's feet and hitting the GoPro cover (too bad you do not also hear all the slush bombs hitting my legs, chest and face too! :-)

[watch on youtube if no video loads below]

As great as the previous video looks, most of the day was not that nice...

"Ok human, you steered us down this path - now what!!!" ask the distressed pair seeing no way
to continue! We are actually at the trailhead as the parking lot is at the other side of this patch of mud.
"Doesn't matter, I do not do mud!" protests the always water averse Zorro.
"Really, walk through the mud, ok..." says more agreeable Max...

It was a quick morning run atop Rabbit Ears as we expected the deteriorating conditions we found and set aside time for only a short outing: 4.5 miles with 350 feet of elevation climbed and a top speed of 17 MPH - still pretty good for a May 29th!

2013/2014 Season to Date: 155 days on the trails covering 1334.4 miles with 151,900 feet of elevation climbed.