Tuesday, October 27, 2015

Good, Bad, Ugly

Every year we get at least one outing that can be summed up by "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly". It is typically an early season run in October or late May/early June.

Well, today was this season's The Good, The Bad and The Ugly...
Taking a quick break high up on Boreas Pass before heading back down.
"Why, yes, I am having a great time!" states sweet Max conversing with me at the break point.
"Yum, yum - snowcones!" demonstrates funny Zorro.

Okay, follow along for today's Good, Bad and Ugly...

The Good: cruising along in 4+ inches of soft, champagne powder. So fun!
Beautiful!

The Bad: yikes - look at that ice covered puddle and spotty dirt along the trail! You must be thinking, "No way you skied on that terrain - impossible!" Well, you are right. The conditions were too poor to take out the skis today, so we used the dog sled instead. The sled can handle hitting dirt & rocks while skis cannot. The downside of the sled is we cannot go as far or as fast as it is just Max & Zorro trying to pull me along. You could say the sled is our ultimate set of "rock skis" :-)
Yikes!

The Ugly: oh my - where did the snow go!!!! As I said, we were on the sled so traversing over frozen ground is still possible. But, I have to get off the sled and run along with Max & Zorro who can suddenly go much faster pulling & bouncing an empty sled over frozen ground. I wear my skijor gangline and hook it to the back of the sled so they do not lose me taking off with the empty sled (but I still have to run as fast as I can to keep up)!
Oh My!

Below is the comical shot of the day. We came upon this large water crossing and Max & Zorro smartly drifted to the left for the shortest part of the crossing. But, upon reaching the short part, water averse Zorro took flight. He hates touching non-frozen water and can long jump just about any water crossing.
"Toes on snow - NEVER on water!" exclaims airborne Zorro.
"What? It is just super cold & refreshing water!" states Max causally trotting through the creek.

Sled outings are never as far, fun or fast as skijor outings but it's better than summer say Max & Zorro!!!

A day of bouncing the sled along good, bad and ugly terrain between Baldy and Boreas Mountains: 6.1 miles traveled with 450 feet of elevation and a top speed of 16 MPH (which is actually pretty fast for the terrain and the sled instead of skis).

2015/2016 Season to Date: 3 days on the trails covering 22.8 miles with 2950 feet of elevation climbed.

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