Narrow Perfection

"Water Crossing! Danger! High Jump! Long Jump!" declares water averse Zorro.

Nice high & long water clearance from Zorro :)

Zorro cracks me up in that prior photo. The water crossing was actually frozen, so no need to leap to avoid it. But, it you hate water as much as Zorro, you can never be too safe. Better to high & long jump than to discover it was not really frozen.

We did a split run this morning, taking young Jack & Rudy for the first half of outing while elder Zorro rested and then joined us for the second half.

Jack, Rudy and I skijored up the backside of Sally Barber Mine, then went out & back on the Trail of Tears side trail and then down the front side of Sally Barber Mine to join with Zorro for an out & back in French Gulch.

The Trail of Tears side trail is a very narrow extreme backcountry trail. By "extreme" I mean a trail that winds through the forest. The set trail is barely 2 dogs wide and the trail with or without snow is often barely 2 dogs wide! This was Rudy's first time skijoring extreme backcountry and Jack's fifth. But it was Jack's first without Zorro's guidance. It takes a lot of trust in your partners to ski through such tight trees. You are so near the wildlife - squirrels to moose and everything in between. You have to have a lot of concentration and self-control to listen to your human and remain on trail. Jack and Rudy did PERFECT - so proud of the two youngsters!

Staying focused with safe speeds and staying on-trail through the forest of distractions!
So proud of the young two!

The reward for being perfect sled dogs on the narrow trails? Well, I let them really open up the engine once we were back on the wide Sally Barber Mine Trail. Wheeee!

Almost our first "hover husky" shot of the season. Jack has what looks to be a single
toe of his front right touching the snow :)

Once we joined up with Zorro, we found more "interesting" terrain. French Gulch contains a handful of private cabins and the owners have keys to the winter gate, allowing them to drive the gulch. Well, a vehicle had been on the trail. The result is you get two "set tracks" that mirror the tire tracks. Unfortunately, the tire track is rarely wide enough to fit three sled dogs. So, we spent most of the day with 2 in one track and one in the other:

Rudy running solo in the left track. Zorro & Jack running joint in the right track with Jack
dipping in & out of the side powder to let elder Zorro remain in-track all day. Polite Jack.

Occasionally, though, the set track widened. Whenever it was "3 Siberians Wide", everyone immediately re-joined and we opened up the throttle. Zoom!

Perfect - wide enough for 3 - here we goooo!

Turnaround time, goofy Jack time...

"He's doing it again!" states Zorro.
"Haha, hehe, roll, roll, roll!" demonstrates snow rolling Jack.
"Head dunk!" adds silly Rudy.

Done with a great day, who is ready for end-of-run treats?

"Me, me too, me three!!!!" says the focused trio.

A fun "long outing" for the youngsters with Zorro coming along for the second half: 9.2 miles traveled with 750 of elevation climbed and a top speed of 21 MPH.

2019/2020 Season to Date: 12 days on the trails covering 71.9 miles with 7100 feet of elevation climbed.