Debris

 A moment of unauthorized play from the 2 three years olds this morning:

"We authorize 'tag & tackle'!" suggests the young goofballs starting a game of
tag while I am navigating a corner in the trail.

Note all the pine needles you see in the prior photo. Well, it was EXTREMELY windy last night and this morning. That lead to a lot of wind blown tree debris on the trail. For the most part, it was just pine needles, small twigs and pinecones. But, we did hit the occasional patch of extreme debris:

Lots of debris across the entire trail here. Jack & Rudy are flying through just
fine; but I'm trying to pick the path of least resistance through this debris.

Despite picking the best path I could, my skis did make a not good/not normal scraping sound through the patch. Good boys Jack & Rudy simultaneously slowed, looked back to check on me and then refocused back to the front once they saw I was ok and my skis went back to normal sounds. I love their concern!

"You ok back there?" asks the wonderful partners concerned about me!

Now for the video counterpart of the prior two photos. As we start, you see the debris is minimal and we are able to fly along the trail as normal. But, the clip ends with us hitting and going through the extreme debris shown in the prior two photos. I love seeing the two kids simultaneously checking on me when the skis hit this patch. Check on the human, all is fine so go, go, go again :)

[watch on youtube if no video loads below]

We had a fun "back and forth" outing this morning. We did a skijor lap on the fast & wide Sally Barber Mine Trail, then a technical lap on the narrow Trail of Tears, then another Sally Barber lap, then another Trail of Tears lap and then a final Sally Barber lap to finish the day. A nice back & forth from wide to narrow trails:

Cruising along the narrow Trail of Tears single track.

In additional the the occasional patches of extreme debris on the trail, we also encountered four downed trees. 2 we were all able to go under, 1 we were able to cautiously step over and 1 required us to go off trail to find a way around the tree. Time to go under? Ok, let's get behind lead dog Jack and off we go:

Jack leading us under the downed tree. Rudy following nicely. I was able
to crouch slightly and make it through too!

Done for the day, time to join up with elder Zorro - yay! 

"Ready!" declares the focused trio!

A fun "back & forth" outing with a lot of technical challenges for Jack & Rudy to perfectly navigate! 7.7 miles traveled with 800 feet of elevation climbed and a top speed of 20 MPH.

2020/2021 Season to Date: 57 days on the trails covering 447.4 miles with 39,500 feet of elevation climbed.