Hello

Hello ma'am, we'll be turning around now :)

Stopped due to a big moose ahead of us on the trail!

We encountered this moose on Baldy Mountain. I was stopped to get Jack & Rudy under control before re-routing us away from the moose. When you encounter a moose, it gets your FULL attention until you get the wild sled dogs under control. Once under control, I suddenly wondered, "Why is she looking ahead (to our left) instead of at us?" Well...

Egad, your kid is to our left! Gadzooks, we'll be going the opposite
direction for SURE now!!!

I seriously had no idea the kid moose was to our left until long into this encounter. Not until, as I said, I got Jack & Rudy under control and wondered why the moose was looking forward and not at us. Moose have their kids in May/June, so by December the kids are getting close in size to the mother. But, I could see that the one to the left was just a bit smaller (despite being closer to us). The mother was getting the kid in view and ready to protect it from us. NEVER put yourself between a mother moose and child. Despite Jack & Rudy's objections, we turned around to re-route ourselves from this trail :)

Well, that was an entertaining way to start our skijor on Baldy Mountain this morning! Our plan was to skijor Baldy to Boreas via the backcountry connector trail and then skijor down Boreas. After a little re-routing around the moose, we got onto the connector. It was surprisingly narrow given that we have not had a lot of new snow recently. Too narrow for shoulder-to-shoulder so we did single file skijoring the majority of the route from Baldy to Boreas:

Only "One Siberian Wide" trail, so single file we go.

Jack is the natural lead dog in our team, so he'll automatically take the front on most single file trails. Rudy happily lets Jack run lead whenever the terrain is narrow or complex. Great team! We go a little slower in single file configuration but by no means are we going "slow" (a 10-14 MPH jog in this setup).

Eventually we connected onto well-used Boreas, so it was back to shoulder-to-shoulder and fast speed:

Wide trail = fast skijoring!

Come along for a short video highlight of the fun on Boreas. Notice the light to medium snowfall coming down around us. Yay for Snow!

[watch on youtube if no video loads below]

Meeting up with Nancy & Zorro to end the day and a rare "shot from the front" this year as Nancy & Zorro are typically at the trailhead and getting a front shot is not too easy:

Fun "Zorro Head" in the foreground as he watches Jack & Rudy jog
to the finish. "I taught them well!" says Zorro :)

We returned to the trailhead with Zorro to get well-earned 'end of run' treats for all:

"Serve them up!" says the focused trio!

A very "moose entertaining" time for Jack & Rudy's first ever skijor from Baldy to Boreas via the backcountry connector! 8.4 miles traveled with 800 feet of elevation climbed and a top speed of 19 MPH.

2020/2021 Season to Date: 18 days on the trails covering 135.0 miles with 12,300 feet of elevation climbed.