Downed Trees

 Rudy can taste the end of run treats before I even handed them out :)

"Slurp! I know what's coming!" demonstrates silly slurping Rudy.
"Ready, hand them out!" adds focused Zorro & Jack.

The morning started out perfect as we had a light layer of fresh snow on the trails with light snow continuing to fall. As we approached one of our favorite backcountry meadows, I was thinking what a perfect day this was turning out to be!

Perfect conditions as we approach this vast backcountry meadow.

But, everything changed once we got deeper into the forest. We had a severe windstorm last Wednesday night and Thursday morning. The trails we were on today are lightly used in the backcountry. As a result, they are far down the list of trails for the county to take care of after heavy winds. We encountered 11 downed trees during our outing that each required some form of creative crossing over or around.

I had to stop to study and evaluate our options with many of the trees. Well, stopped...

"You study, we'll roll!" demonstrates the 'stop, drop & roll' brothers :)

Some of the trees had a natural crossing point. So, I only needed to tell Jack where to look and he would lead us over:

Good Jack leading us over the tree. Polite Jack & Rudy both waited patiently
for me on the other side of the tree to step over sideways in my skis.

For a while, it seemed like every time we just started to "get going" we'd encounter yet another tree. Come along for today's short video highlight as we just started "getting going" on the trail when we have to stop for yet another downed tree!

[watch on youtube if no video loads below]

Despite the prior video, we did have quite a few extended openings between downed trees to get in some serious skijoring:

Zooming along without a downed tree in sight! Yay!

An interesting day full of backcountry downed tree obstacles: 8.1 miles traveled with 700 feet of elevation climbed and a top speed of 19 MPH.

2020/2021 Season to Date: 59 days on the trails covering 464.8 miles with 41,200 feet of elevation climbed.