Proud

Breaking trail in about 8-10 inches of fresh snow with Jack & Rudy at Sally Barber Mine!

Nice shot of Sally Barber Mine and beautiful shot of trail breaking
Jack & Rudy!

We did a split run this morning where Jack & Rudy towed me up, over and down the Sally Barber Mine Trail before adding Zorro to do an out & back in French Gulch. In addition to the fun trail breaking you see above, we had lots of other fun along the way to meet Zorro. Come along for the highlights...

Cruising along the trail when Rudy suddenly launches himself in a rodent swan dive off trail into the deep snow:

"Incoming!!!!" demonstrates airborne Rudy.
"Nice form little bro!" says onlooking Jack.

The result of a rodent dive? Well two things today. First, a dive results in a fully submerged DUNK in the snow. Second, any dive or dunk will get a similar response from your brother :)

"DUNK!" demonstrates submerged Rudy.
"Hey, wait for me!!!!" says diving Jack. As you see, Jack doesn't get quite the lift
that Rudy does in dives; but the resulting dunk is often just as good :)

More fun from the day comes along in today's video highlight. We showcase the difference between skijoring and skiing in this clip. Come along as there is a skier on the trail in front of us working hard to propel himself along. Meanwhile, I am sitting back on the skis as my skijor partners do most of the work and we catch the skier quickly. I start snowplowing near the end of the clip to keep us from running the guy over, waiting for him to notice us. He doesn't notice us, so I eventually stop to give him a head start before catching him again (he noticed us on the second catch and moved over so we could pass :)

[watch on youtube if no video loads below]

Done with Sally Barber and time to add Zorro in the group. We were second tracks on the French Gulch Trail with the first tracks belonging to a moose!!!!! Eventually the moose tracks went off trail and into the gulch, so, of course, Zorro, Jack & Rudy's attention went into the gulch as well:

"Beep beep - our noses say moose this way!" declares the moose monitors.
Despite seeing lots of moose tracks weaving through the deep snow in the gulch, we
failed to see an actual moose itself :(

We did a short out & back in French Gulch. Here we are on the way back as Zorro & Rudy ride the track we set on the way out while Powder Jack continues laying fresh tracks to the right:

Love the snow poofs around Powder Jack :)

We did a short out & back in French Gulch as the snow eventually got too deep for older Zorro. We had a set time to meet Nancy at the trailhead and since we did a short out&back, we decided to see if we could skijor French Gulch Road until meeting Nancy driving up the road. This road gets plowed, so whether or not we could skijor it was in question.

The following photo is the proudest moment I have of young Jack & Rudy's skijoring career. Why so proud? Well, look at the thin layer of snow with lots of exposed ground on the road. My skis are on the left shoulder behind and to the left of Rudy; but this is very thin cover too. They only way to proceed was cautiously - no sprinting or opening up the skijor throttle. Now look at this photo and see that all three of my partners are in a gentle trot even though they are a road where they could sprint. Veteran Zorro knows to slow on sketchy conditions without any instruction from me. Well, today that happened with Jack & Rudy too. I never said a single "easy" or other command to keep them in a gentle trot. The kids automagically switched to a gentle trot to match the sketchy conditions! A year ago I would have had to take my skis off and walk this road because Jack & Rudy would not understand slowing down. The youngsters really are maturing into incredible skijor partners like Zorro! So proud!

A gentle trot to preserve the human on sketchy conditions. What professionals!

From trail breaking on Sally Barber to Moosing in French Gulch to a perfect mature trio on sketchy French Gulch Road - what a fun day: 7.5 miles traveled with 600 feet of elevation climbed and a top speed of 20 MPH.

2019/2020 Season to Date: 41 days on the trails covering 273.8 miles with 27,100 feet of elevation climbed.