Four Trails

French Gulch presented us with "4 types of trails" on this morning's outing - fun!

Zoom we go sprinting along in lower French Gulch.

The lower and middle sections of French Gulch was fast-packed and wide. We were flying along at a torrid pace on the lower & middle trail. The GPS clocked us topping 24 MPH. I put together two short clips from our sprint on this section of trail - somewhere along the way in these clips is where we were topping 24 MPH. Wheeee!

[watch on youtube if no video loads below]

Our skijoring pace on the lower/mid trail was ridiculously fast, I was thinking we were going to top 11 miles on this outing at that pace. But, as is always the case with French Gulch, eventually the super fast lower/mid trail gives way to lesser used upper French Gulch. The upper section of trail was a narrow single track just barely 2 Siberians wide.

Slowed by a narrow trail, but still having a blast cruising upper French Gulch.
Love the view of the "sun soaked" mountain in front of us. We are shaded by a large mountain
to our left in upper French Gulch so the morning sun has not hit our trail yet.

Eventually the "human made" tracks ended and we were past the last meadow of French Gulch and heading towards French Pass. Max & Zorro quickly found a moose trail to follow!

Swimming in a trail set by moose. Look closely and you can see the moose trail leading
us into the trees ahead of us. We never saw the moose itself, but my partners noses said the
trail was VERY fresh!

The moose trail eventually dipped down into French Creek so we continued straight on our own. Our 4th type of trail this morning: No Trail as we set our own path towards French Pass.

Nobody, not even moose, have been out this far in French Gulch!

Finally, the silly human declared it time to turn around and head back...

"Well, I'm going to roll snow angels to cool off first!" demonstrates silly Max.
"I see no, absolutely no, reason to turnaround!" says intense 'moose scanning' Zorro.

Four types of trail all within the French Gulch system: fast-packed, narrow-packed, moose-trail and no-trail. What a fun morning: 9.2 miles traveled with 1100 feet of elevation climbed and a top speed of 24 MPH.

2016/2017 Season to Date: 62 days on the trails covering 485.5 miles with 51,400 feet of elevation climbed.