Equipment Failure

The day started on beautiful, fresh groomed nordic trails....

Whee - first tracks on the fresh groom! Wheeee!

We were literally flying all over the perfect trails at Breckenridge Nordic Center:

Catching air as we fly by the Hallelujah Warming Hut. Zoom!

It was a perfect outing until... Equipment failure. What do you notice wrong about the following photo?

Do you see it?

Is the problem that my gloves are off? No, not quite. Is the problem that my backpack is off and in my hands? No, not quite. Is it the binding detached from the ski on the right? Bingo, that's it! Yes, the binding literally ripped off its ski and sent me into quite a tumble on the trail. Part of the detached binding is on the ground next to the ski in this photo; but only part (some of it is still missing). You can see the discolored part of the ski where the binding USED to be glued to the ski. Yikes, we literally ripped the binding from the ski while flying around a corner at 20ish miles per hour!

"What now?" asked my great partners who were VERY patient with my trying to find & reassemble my ski on the trail. 

"What now?" asks the patient pair.

Unfortunately, the answer was, "I can't reassemble! We'll have to hike out." My backpack is able to carry a pair of skis (thus, the reason it was off in the previous photo) for such emergencies. 

Fortunately, we were actually pretty close to the finish when this happened. We were about 3 minutes in skijor time from Jack & Rudy towing me to the completion of the day's outing. But, we had to hike it out with the skis on my backpack instead. It was an interesting comparison. What takes Jack & Rudy 3 minutes to run & tow me, took 20+ minutes for us to hike with me behind them. They sure do add some speed to our outings :)

Arriving roughly 20 minutes late, but at least we are all in one piece!

"I remember the 'broken equipment hikes' too, glad you are ok!" says retired veteran Zorro.
"At least we still have 'end of run' treats!" adds Jack & Rudy.

Unfortunately, today's broken ski is beyond easy repair. Fortunately, we have a backup pair of skis to keep the season going. The backup pair is almost dead itself, so fingers crossed we can cobble together enough equipment to keep skijoring until the snow runs out! 9.8 miles traveled with 1000 feet of elevation climbed and a top speed of 23 MPH.

2021/2022 Season to Date: 132 days on the trails covering 1121.3 miles with 104,400 feet of elevation climbed.