Catching Air

Catching air sprinting atop the Spring crust at Rabbit Ears Pass!

The sprinting/airborne Siberian Hovercraft at its best!

It was an interesting and non-standard outing this morning. Our plan was to skijor our favorite fast trail at Rabbit Ears. This trail is relatively flat and often groomed leading to fast outings. But, today was a bust. We found the trail to be an icy and tracked up mess. Basically snowmobiles had tracked it up on a warm day yesterday and then the "tracked up slush" froze overnight. So, the usually fast trail was instead an iced up snowmobile mess. Nothing is worse for Max & Zorro's (or any sled dog's) ankles and feet than stale & icy snowmobile slop. Well, Zorro gave me the nudge to try "off trail", so we stepped out of the iced up mess and found an untouched Spring crust to take us away from the set trail for miles & miles & miles. Wow!

We traded an iced up and ankle breaking mess for the following:

Wide angle shot to showcase the PERFECT Spring crust to run for miles & miles! Wheeee!

Today's short & comical video clip: Typically we all hit sprint straightaways in unison as one of us get the "sprint itch" and the rest of us get it within milliseconds of one another. But, occasionally one of us misses the itch. Watch today's clip as Zorro and I are in sync with the upcoming sprint straightaway while Max is distracted and misses the cue. Then watch how impressively fast Max gets the memo and shoots into the groove. Fast Max!

[watch on youtube if no video loads below]

Oh the rising temperatures of March...

I paused momentarily to get our bearings as we were skijoring off trail. So...
"You are stopped - must roll snow angels to cool off!" demonstrates silly Max.
"This way, just follow me!" declares all-business Zorro.

A day that started with disastrous conditions turned into a 9+ mile uncharted fun crust run!

"Now that was FUN!" say my ecstatic pair at our turnaround point of the outing.

A wonderfully creative outing this morning: 9.3 miles traveled with 750 feet of elevation climbed and a top speed of 23 MPH.

2016/2017 Season to Date: 108 days on the trails covering 900.7 miles with 95,750 feet of elevation climbed.