Following Evil

Look at what pure evil we encountered on the trail this morning!

Yes, that is a PLOW in front of us destroying the French Gulch Trail!

As I have mentioned in the past, there are a handful of private cabins in French Gulch and the owners have access to open the "winter gate" that keeps all other vehicles out of the gulch. Unfortunately in the past few years a couple of the owners have been contracting a plow to occasionally blow away all the snow from this otherwise perfect backcountry trail!

As we arrived at the trailhead this morning, this plow passed us in the parking lot and started plowing the gulch. Ugh! It is actually okay the moments after the plowing (there is still enough snow to skijor); but the long term impact is that the trail will be dead and down to dirt & mud after one warm day.

The other problem with today's damn plow? It is slow (to a sled dog, that is). We let the plow get out of sight from us before starting on the trail and, then, within 1-3 weaves up the trail we would catch it again. This happened 5 times! Yes, we had stop 5 times and wait for the damn slow plow to get out of sight before restarting and catching it again. At one point we flew past a cross country skier on the trail and then had to stop again for the plow. While stopped, the skier came up to me and said, "I cannot believe you are faster than the plow! You guys are flying!" I then proceeded to tell her that this was already our third time stopping to let the plow get ahead of us (not knowing we still had 2 more stops to come).  Everyone's reaction to our 3rd stop and my conversation with the other skier:

"Tell me about it! Can you BELIEVE we are stopped AGAIN!" says distressed Rudy.
"Yes we are pretty fast aren't we!" adds flirting Zorro.
"I say we just turn around and go fast the other way!" says happy Jack.

The only positive thing you can say about the plow is that it made for a fun fast track for today's run. How fast? Well, today's was young Rudy's top speed of his young life: 22 MPH!

Flying along the fast packed plow track. But look at how HIGH the snow wall is to Rudy's
right. This is how much snowpack SHOULD be in the gulch this time of year if the evil plows
didn't keep removing it! Ugh!

Just how fast? Well, come along for Rudy's first 22 MPH skijor. Zoom!

[watch on youtube if no video loads below]

Despite the evil plow, we always have a great time on the trails, right guys?

"Hi mom - I had a BLAST today!" says cute Rudy flashing Nancy a happy face.
"Fun? Yes, but how about some of those 'end of run' treats?" asks happy Jack.
"Yes, dish them out!" adds focused Zorro.

Consider this... We followed the evil plow for about 2.5 miles and had to stop 5 times to give it a head start. Either Zorro, Jack & Rudy are FAST or plows are slugs.... I think the former :)

5.6 miles traveled with 400 feet of elevation climbed and a top speed of 22 MPH.

2018/2019 Season to Date: 33 days on the trails covering 175.5 miles with 15,500 feet of elevation climbed.