Premonition

A wild day chasing wildlife all over Rabbit Ears Pass!

"No that was FUN!" exclaims ecstatic Max.
"Moose and porcupines - my favorite!" declares silly Zorro.

How fresh were the moose tracks we encountered on the trail this morning? Well, fresh enough for Max to break out into his patented "bucking bronco moose scream" even though we never saw the moose. The tracks and scent of moose were sooooo strong that Max broke out into his bucking moose scream without a moose visual! He's only done this once before in his life - normally it takes a visual for him to turn into a bucking bronco screamer...

"MOOOOOOOSE!!!! I SMEEEEELLLL MOOOOOSE!!!!!" screams bucking bronco Max.
"Must be to the left, must be to the left!" declares intense hunting Zorro.

How prevalent was the "scent of moose" along the trail this morning? Well, so prevalent that Zorro could not maintain a forward-focused sprint for very long before scanning left, right, left, right, etc for moose!

"Smells so moosey to the left! Where is it?!?" says sprint-n-hunt Zorro.
Max is still focused forward, so you know there is not a moose to our left; but silly
Zorro had to keep scanning every direction!

Zorro was so focused on scanning left & right that I had to stop reacting to him and watch Max. At first I would start to snowplow with each of his scans so I could safely look that way too. After many false alarms I noticed Max was not scanning as much as Zorro. So, I switched to watching Max and only slowed to glance when Max did too. Zorro had "moose on the brain" and couldn't focus :)

Funny story... I was telling Nancy on the way to the trailhead this morning that I had a dream last night that we skijored this section of Rabbit Ears and encountered a moose, herd of yak, porcupine, bear and mountain lion. Was this premonition on my part?

We encountered one snowless patch of trail where I had to take my skis off to cross before starting again on snow. As we started to cross this patch of dirt, a porcupine waddled from a nearby tree and climbed up the tree. We treed a porcupine. Fresh moose tracks then treed porcupine, I started scanning the forest for yaks, bears and mountain lions! :)

Yes the picture is ugly (no snow). But I just had to show Max & Zorro staring intensely
up the tree the porcupine climbed. We could see it partway up the tree even though it does
not come out well in this photo. Treed a porcupine, oh my!

Oh yeah, we did some skijoring too :)

Zoom, zoom, zoom we go in between moose and porcupine events.

Next time I dream of moose, yak, porcupine, bear and lion, I will not go skijoring on the trail where the dream occurred! 8.2 miles traveled with 800 feet of elevation climbed and a top speed of 21 MPH.

2016/2017 Season to Date: 153 days on the trails covering 1281.5 miles with 135,900 feet of elevation climbed.