Klutz

What a beautiful shot of fresh tracks Jack & Rudy hovering over the trail this morning!

Awesome terrain, awesome sled dogs! Wheeee!

We did an "out & back" on this seldom used service road tucked away in the backcountry. The trail conditions were incredible and, since the trail is also a service road, we were able to lay fresh tracks out and back each side of the trail. So, the tracks you see in the prior and next photo are our own tracks. What a perfect stretch of terrain!

Hovering in the prior photo and flying in this photo. Zoom!

Come along for the "fresh tracks fun ride" and witness the Corner Klutz (that would be ME) almost lose it for no reason other than being a klutz! About 20s into the video and I overcorrect for the upcoming corner in the trail and almost send myself into a snowbank! What a klutz! But, watch as I do recover from my mistake and get back in line with perfect Jack & Rudy. At least I was only a partial klutz and didn't wipe myself out :)

[watch on youtube if no video loads below]

But, wait, if the tracks to the left in the video are our own out tracks, then what is up with the Jack & Rudy tracks drifting off trail twice (around 30s and 33s in the clip)? Well, this is well known moose territory. So, if your nose catches the scent of moose, you must step off trail to scan the trees for the big smelly creatures!

Only the scent of moose can pull Jack & Rudy off trail like this!
Despite their intensity, we did not see any moose.

What other fun did we have this morning?

Well, I got some nice partial views of the ski runs of Breckenridge Ski Resort across the valley from us multiple times:

Nice partial view of Breckenridge Ski Resort ahead of us.

Ok, fun views for the human. How about Jack & Rudy? Well, how about coming across a large collection of bird feathers scattered around the trail? All the little black objects you see in the next photo are scattered feathers. The scattering spread for about 2-3 times the distance you see in the photo and many of the feathers were still red with bird blood. Some poor bird caught and untimely meeting with a fox or coyote in the past few hours! Luckily (for me) and unluckily (for Jack & Rudy), the body belonging to the feathers had been carried off by the fox or coyote!

"Fresh black feathers with red sauce! Yum!" says the silly kids :)

Since we didn't find any meat to go along with the feathers, we might as well have 'end of run' pork treats with retired mentor Zorro instead:

"You have our full attention!" declares the focused trio.

Great morning with a really fun "fresh tracks" run for part of the outing: 8.8 miles traveled with 900 feet of elevation climbed and a top speed of 21MPH.

2021/2022 Season to Date: 86 days on the trails covering 709.0 miles with 66,600 feet of elevation climbed.