Crust

Another beautiful morning for a skijor with my handsome & happy pals :)

"We are having a GREAT time!" expresses the happy trio at a turnaround
point this morning.

The highlight of today's skijor? Well, the Spring Crust is set!!!! Every season, at some point in March or April, the spring crust will develop over our solid snowpack. Once we get to a stretch of warm days followed by cold nights, the crust over the snowpack solidifies such that it can support our weight every morning without punching through. You never know when the crust is going to solidify; but we have been in a warm spell recently with the warm days/cold nights needed to solidify the crust. It is so fun once the crust is solid as we can abandon set trails and skijor any direction we want for miles and miles!

What a perfect crust as we are making our own path across a
vast meadow. Just 1 week ago, we would have been punching through
the snow and could not skijor these meadows.
Love the fun footprints on the crust behind the three
(especially behind Zorro :)

Come along and watch as here we go for our first "crust skijor" of the 2019/2020 season. Note the snowmobile track on the crust as the video starts. We were originally on the set trail far off to our right when I noticed the snowmobile tracks on the crust in this vast meadow. Well, if the crust can hold a snowmobile, it can most certainly hold us. Wheeee!

[watch on youtube if no video loads below]

We were out in Swan Valley this morning when we discovered this wonderful crust. Our plan was to do a warmup lap out the Middle Fork Trail before coming back to the main trail. Well, it ended up being a super fun warmup lap on the endless meadows of crust near Middle Fork and then we dropped back onto the main trails to flirt and run with the dog sled teams from Good Times Adventures.

Unfortunately, the "dog sled trails" were not too busy today. But, we did get to stop and flirt with 2 teams we encountered on trails nearby us.

Look real closely. The wheel dogs of the team are just to the left of Jack's tail
and the musher/sled is just to the right of Jack's head.

A little further along and we stopped to watch a team go up a trail parallel to us.

You have to look real hard on this one.
The wheel dogs are to the right of Jack's head just before the tree branch.
The musher is wearing white but look for him to the left (and almost touching)
Zorro's head.

As I said, only a couple of flirt opportunities in Swan Valley today, but still a fun time had by all:

"Whee, any and ALL skijoring is FUN skijoring!" declares the happy trio
as we end the day's run.

A fun day as we traded "flirting with dog sled teams" for "skijoring the crust over endless meadows": 6.1 miles traveled with 500 feet of elevation climbed and a top speed of 20 MPH.

2019/2020 Season to Date: 121 days on the trails covering 821.0 miles with 74,900 feet of elevation climbed.