Gold Run

Flying along the groomed trails at Gold Run Nordic Center this morning!

Beautiful shot of the out-stretched, sprinting Siberians!

We have a tradition every year. The morning after Gold Run Nordic Center closes for the season, we go out and skijor their nordic groomed terrain. The trails would have been groomed yesterday morning for their closing day, so they are still in near perfect groomed condition the next morning. It is a fun treat for Max, Zorro and myself to zip around the trails on what is very easy and fast terrain compared to our normal backcountry or snowmobile trails.

A nice shot of "airborne Zorro" below. Max is barely out of sync with Zorro's airborne tuck, otherwise this clip could have been on par with the "flying saucer Siberian" shots we often get at Vail Pass...

Flying along the easy nordic trails - wheeee!

Today's video highlight is, of course, the three of us sprinting along the Gold Run Nordic Trails.

[watch on youtube if no video loads below]

Note at the end of the video that we encounter some people and their dog to the right while the trail we need to take goes to the left. If you have your volume up, you can hear me call out "Left" and Max immediately listens to my instruction. It takes another "Left" to get Zorro completely with the program and turning to ignore the loose dog. This is why we refer to Max as our lead dog - outside of a moose distraction, he listens to everything I say. Such a great leader. Zorro on the other hand is our classic wheel dog as he sometimes needs Max's lead to follow. I like to tell people, "Max always listens. Zorro wants to listen but sometimes he forgets!" :-)

Guess what else we discovered this morning? Apparently moose have gotten into the tradition of using the Gold Run trails the day after closing too! We encountered fresh moose tracks (and moose droppings) three different times on the outing!

Stopped in our tracks to sniff fresh moose prints! I have labeled one moose print above, look
closely and you can see the large two-toed print next to the label in the photo!

A fun day zooming around the nordic groomed terrain:

"Great time, this is fun!" exclaim the happy pair at our quick midpoint break of the outing.

Flying around 8.7 miles with 650 feet of elevation climbed and a top speed of 24 MPH.

2014/2015 Season to Date: 113 days on the trails covering 979.2 miles with 103,450 feet of elevation climbed.