Passing 1000

Having a great snowy day as we surpass 1000 miles for the season!

"Let's do 1000 more!" says my happily snow covered partners at our midpoint of the day.

We had quite the interesting outing as we started at about 11,000 feet elevation and went up higher before coming down to almost 9400 feet elevation. We had fresh snow fall overnight and it was snowing our entire outing. At our high point we found over 12 inches of untouched powder to break trail through. Max & Zorro were enjoying plowing through the soft & fluffy powder:

Great shot of the powder plows as you can barely see Max & Zorro because of all the
powder they are plowing through and kicking up all around themselves!

Sometimes it is fun to put Max & Zorro in slow motion and watch the powder plows. Come along today as we slow down the video to watch the trail breaking powder plows. Impressive!

[watch on youtube if no video loads below]

After the previous photo and video, you are probably thinking, "Wow, that's deep, how did you get any distance in today's outing?" Well, it was all in the plan. The deep snow was at the upper elevations near 11,700 feet. Today was a rare outing where we had more downhill grade than uphill grade on the route. After topping out in the deep snow around 11,700, we then went down, down, down to finish at just over 9400 feet. The further down we went, the less deep the day's fresh snow and, thus, the faster we went...

Down almost 2000 feet from our high point and we are now laying fresh tracks in only 2-3
inches of fresh snow. What a difference in snow depth across 2000 feet!

The highlight of the day? Hmmm, surpassing 1000 miles? Maybe. Plowing through 12+ inches of fluffy powder? Maybe. Finding fresh moose tracks? EXACTLY....

"Oh, these moose prints are very FRESH!" declare the moose inspectors.
We never saw the moose, but our noses said these tracks were very fresh!

A mix of 12+ inch trail breaking and 2+ inch fresh tracks leading to an 8.2 mile outing with 700 feet of elevation climbed and a top speed of 19 MPH.

2016/2017 Season to Date: 120 days on the trails covering 1003.0 miles with 106,300 feet of elevation climbed.

1100 miles here we come. 1200 miles we certainly anticipate. 1300... ??? Hmm, had you asked me 3 weeks ago (amidst our extremely warm & dry March) I would have said no. But, it has been snowing almost every day for the last 8 or so with more in the forecast. Could we really build snowpack to get us to 1300 miles? We'll see...