24 Hours

Nice shot from the front of the happy, happy sled dogs towing me to the finish of this morning's skijor!

"Wheee - we had so much fun today!" declares the happy trio.

We went to the same network of trails as yesterday in Swan Valley. Oh boy, what a difference 24 hours of May temperatures can make! Yesterday we were laying fresh tracks all morning long with only the occasional patch of exposed ground on the sides of the trails. 24 hours later and look what we found in the following photo - egad!!!!!

"It's not pretty up here!" Zorro is telling me.
"Weren't we 'toes on snow' in this exact location yesterday?" asks Jack.
"OMG!" adds Rudy.

What to do with this patch of exposed ground? Luckily Zorro is a well seasoned veteran to teach the youngsters. Basically I move slowly to the edge of the snow and then I keep repeating "wait" as I cautiously put one ski on the ground, then step and put the next ski on ground and finally put the first back on snow. I was quite proud of Jack & Rudy who, with Zorro's leadership, maintained the "wait" as I stepped with skis through the dirt patch! This is Rudy's first ever May skijoring, so his first time seeing what can happen to the trails in May. It is Jack's second ever May skijoring, but he only had 2 or 3 outings last May with exposed ground. Look up the trail in front of us and you see another patched of exposed ground. We had 6 of these patches over the course of today's outing and we had 2 patches that were so long that I had to remove my skis to walk over. I can do 2 or at most 3 steps over ground with skis on; but more than that and I have to take the skis off.

Now take a look at the following photo! All the exposed ground was within the first mile or so of the trailhead. Once over the lower terrain it got better and better the further up we went. So nice up high!

A great "untouched shoulder" on a wide snowmobile trail. Perfect conditions
to uncork the skijoring engine!

It got so nice the higher we went, we were even able to abandon trails and skijor the spring crust for about a mile and a half! I noticed a snowmobile track on the crust. Since we had fresh snow Saturday night, I knew this snowmobile had been on the crust less than 24 hours ago. If it could hold a snowmobile yesterday, it could still hold us today.

Wheeee - off we go making our own path along the solid crust.

Today's video goes along with the prior photo. Here is a fun fact... We are actually skijoring on a crust on top of Swan River! Within a few weeks this exact spot will look like a river to raft, not a crust to skijor! At about 20ish seconds into the video, you will start to see some river exposure. I moved us close and then into the snowmobile track to make sure we were on crust strong enough to hold us. What a fun "crust tour" up high.

[watch on youtube if no video loads below]

We did an out & back on the South Fork Trail this morning. At our turnaround point - everybody having a good time?

"Yes!!!! Such nice snow up high!" declares the happy, happy trio.

Sketchy conditions down low but PERFECT conditions up high!!! 7 miles traveled with 700 feet of elevation climbed and a top speed of 19 MPH.

2018/2019 Season to Date: 116 days on the trails covering 668.7 miles with 62,500 feet of elevation climbed.