Failed Attempt

We attempted to establish a new trail in lower French Gulch today.

A lot of trail breaking fun; but we failed to establish a good, reusable trail...

Open terrain with a nice snowpack as we establish a new trail across this small meadow.

As I mentioned yesterday, some idiot plowed the lower section of the French Gulch Trail while the upper section of the gulch has incredible & perfect skijoring conditions. Since the snow in the upper gulch and on the sides of the plowed lower is so incredible, we decided to return to this trail today and try to build a new trail up the lower terrain. As you can see in the photo above, we had some success as we set a new trail across a few open areas. But, we failed in establishing a good & reusable trail up the entire lower section. The problem was we kept running into French Creek (the water flow for which the gulch exists) causing us to drift to the right and then we kept running into dense trees causing us to drift to the left. A few times the dense trees and creek touched and we had to climb over logs, bushes and tree wells that made the path something you would not want to reuse. Argh...

After failing to set a new trail parallel to the plowed section, we eventually gave up and got on the main (plowed) trail to run up & down the gulch:

You can still open up the throttle on the plowed section; but it is a few sunny/warm days away
from being un-skiable.

Why are we so determined to keep skijoring alive in French Gulch? Well, two reasons: (1) the snowpack in the upper gulch is wonderful and will last through April and into May. and... (2) Max & Zorro love running French Gulch and getting the scents & sightings of moose! How can you abandon a trail with such moose potential?!!??!?

"Fresh moose tracks off the trail right here!" demonstrates Max with his nose in the moose track.
"Let me see, let me see!!!" exclaims Zorro hopping over to join Max in the moose track sniff.

While we failed to establish a new trail in lower French Gulch, that does not mean we did not have a great time today:

"I had fun!" exclaims happy Max at our turnaround point in the upper gulch.
"Me too! I had a blast!" declares happy little Zorro.

A shorter than average outing (distance-wise) as we spent quite a bit of time trying to find some way to establish a new trail in the deep snow in the lower gulch: 7.3 miles with 850 feet of elevation climbed and a top speed of 17 MPH.

2014/2015 Season to Date: 95 days on the trails covering 819.3 miles with 87,400 feet of elevation climbed.