Pray for Snow

After yesterday's fun outing at Rabbit Ears Pass, we returned for more fun this morning.

One of the occasional stretches where we were able to open up the throttle a little bit
(but not much!)

It is still hunting season in Colorado, so we are sharing our trails with 4wd vehicles that are trying to get to the same terrain as us. Unfortunately some of the best "hunting terrain" in the state is also some of the best "early season snow terrain" as well. As a result, we find the trails chopped up by vehicles in between each new snow.

We expected this but since it was nice up high yesterday and not too warm, we were hoping the hunting vehicles did not do as much damage to the terrain as they did. Well, we were wrong...

Most of the day looked like this photo: tire tracks for Max & Zorro with center snow for my
skis and intermittent puddles in the tracks.

Surprisingly, as bad as the previous photo may look, it is actually safe terrain to maintain a gentle jog or trot for miles and miles. The skis ride fine down the center and Max & Zorro trot in the tracks and hurdle the puddles. The caveat is that you cannot skijor anything steep on this type of terrain; but keep the elevations modest and you can trot for many miles! Occasionally we would get a nice stretch of all snow to increase the speeds...

All white for a while as Max & Zorro take the same tracks to pick up the speed a bit.

We did hit a handful of "oh my god" patches. Here is one such patch:

Yikes - look at all that exposed ground! But, enough snow to still keep a gentle jog as I have
the skis on the shoulder as Max jogs in the mud and Zorro on the snow (Zorro NEVER lets
his feet touch dirt or mud if he can help it!)

At our midpoint break and Max provided some entertainment for Zorro and I:

"Watch me roll a snow angel - wheeee!" demonstrates silly Max as Zorro and I watch.

Once we saw the vehicle damage to the trail, we quickly adjusted our route for the day to keep the elevations minimal. As a result, we were able to trot a surprising 8 miles by keeping the total elevation climbed to only 600 feet. It was "trotting for miles and miles" as we could keep going but never really open the throttle as our top speed was a modest 14 MPH. An 8 mile gentle jog on snow - it is still better than summer. But, PRAY FOR SNOW - we need more!

2015/2016 Season to Date: 7 days on the trails covering 55.8 miles with 5700 feet of elevation climbed.