Bear Tracks

We had stretches of "perfect crust" this morning; but only stretches with lots of sketchy terrain in between!

Perfect crust stretch with Jack & Rudy - wheeee!

Today's outing found us starting with Zorro to visit our favorite "spring crust meadow" close to home and then I was going to take the kids, Jack & Rudy, up & further for more exercise.

Our favorite nearby home meadow was perfect as you see in the photo above. Unfortunately, the GoPro camera was NOT perfect. Unbeknownst to me, it was not working properly for our entire first leg of the outing with Zorro. Oh well, what I should have had was a nice photo and accompanying video like the prior photo but with Zorro, Jack & Rudy.

At least Nancy had her camera to catch Zorro at our handoff points:

Happy, happy trio cruising along!

Once we left elder Zorro off with Nancy, I took the kids out to tour Prospect Hill. It was along the way with Jack & Rudy that I noticed the camera was not recording. It was a quick fix, at least, to then get some footage with the fun kids. We had to abort our plan to go up Prospect Hill pretty early as the conditions were quickly deteriorating. This trail starts in the trees and then quickly gets into wide open and sun exposed terrain. It was getting "iffy" in the shade, you can only imagine once we hit the open hill.

Good job by Jack & Rudy taking the "snow bridge" over open and flowing
water on each side of us!

Once we abandoned the Prospect Hill plan, we improvised and followed the firm crust wherever it lead us. Eventually it lead us to a set of bear tracks in the snow! Bear tracks are rare on skijor outings because they are sleeping most of the season; but it is not unheard of for us to encounter bear prints in October or May. It turns out this was young Jack & Rudy's first time encountering bear tracks while skijoring (they have seen bears many times in summer). What to make of bear tracks?

"Sniff, sniff - delicious smelling!" says the bear print inspecting pair.
You can see the trail of tracks leading away from us and into
the nearby trees.

Hey Jack, what should we do with bear prints in the snow?

"Roll in them!!!!! Of course, ROLL in them!" demonstrates silly Jack
dropping and rolling around in the bear prints.

Hmm, what about you Rudy? What should we do with bear prints in the snow?

"I agree - ROLL in them!!!!!" demonstrates silly Rudy following Jack's
lead to drop & roll in the bear prints!

Ok, bear tracks aside, we did do some fun skijoring this morning. The best part was time spent in our favorite meadow. We did one lap in the meadow with Zorro, then one lap around the meadow with Jack & Rudy and, finally, one last sprint across the meadow with the kids before dipping into the trees for a little "complex navigation" to get into the next meadow to end our outing. Come along and watch the third leg of the meadow fun (sprint, navigate, sprint).

[watch on youtube if no video loads below]

Back to the trailhead to share 'end of run' pork treats with Zorro:

"You have our full attention!" says the happy & focused trio!

Fun day: crust skijoring with Zorro, bear hunting with Jack & Rudy and then multiple laps of crust skijoring with Jack & Rudy: 6.1 miles traveled with 600 feet of elevation climbed and a top speed of 20 MPH.

2019/2020 Season to Date: 162 days on the trails covering 1106.7 miles with 101,000 feet of elevation climbed.