Crust and Trees

Skijoring the Spring Crust from what looks like the Top of the World!

Love abandoning established trails and making our own path across the spring crust!

We started the morning at the Dry Lake Trailhead, a popular starting point for snowmobiling. After going up the main (and tracked up) snowmobile trail for about a mile, we decided to test the crust off the trail and into the forest. To our delight, the crust was strong enough to hold our weight. As a result, we abandoned the tracked up main trail and invented our own trail weaving through the forest and across open meadows. I had to be careful to leave big Xs in the snow with my poles to that we could find our way back :)

You know you have arrived as a "skijoring team" when you can ski the trees solely on voice command. Max & Zorro are such great sled dogs, they'll weave through the trees with me based on my calls of 'left', 'right', 'forward' and 'easy' (e.g., slow down). We skijored through many groups of tight trees on complete voice control. What a joy these two are!

"We're listening, tell us how you want to weave!" say my perfect skijor partners towing me
through tight trees.

While weaving through the trees is a blast, it is even more fun to hit an open meadow and floor it across the spring crust. Come along and watch as we encounter such an open meadow and put the pedal to the metal!

[watch on youtube if no video loads below]

Making your own trail - weaving through the trees and sprinting across meadows. Fun, right guys?

"You bet! Today was a BLAST!" say my ecstatic pair at our turnaround point of the morning.

Sprint the crust and weave the trees making our own path for 9.2 miles with 1100 feet of elevation climbed and a top speed of 21 MPH.

2016/2017 Season to Date: 117 days on the trails covering 977.8 miles with 103,900 feet of elevation climbed.