Thursday, February 2, 2023

Beautiful Morning

It was a GORGEOUS bluebird morning atop Vail Pass today.

Added bonus (compared to the last two days) was temperatures above 0 F the entire morning. Perfect!

Cresting after climbing up Shrine Pass from the main Vail Pass Trailhead.

As we started the morning on the Shrine Pass Trail, I was thinking, "wow, what great conditions!" as the trail groomer had run early this morning and only a few snowmobiles had been out on the trails since then. As you see in the prior photo, Jack and Rudy are running on a smooth groomed surface with a single snowmobile track in between them.

Vail Pass is very popular with snowmobiles and there are tons of places to leave the main trail and go play in the snow. It turns out every snowmobile that had been out before us this morning decided to turn off the main trail at the top of Shrine Pass. What did we find on the backside of Shrine Pass? Oh my goodness, just look for yourself!!!!

Wow - the entire backside of Shrine Pass recently groomed with a light
layer of fresh snow and NOBODY had been here before us! WOW!

I'm not sure if I've ever skijored this backside trail in a great a condition as today. Jack & Rudy were flying, enjoying the perfect trail. I stopped at what is sometimes our turnaround point to check our time out on the trail. Well, I stopped...

"You stop, I stop, drop and ROLL!" demonstrates snow angel Jack.
"WOOOOOO! Why'd we stop?" questions wooing Rudy.

Well, it turns out Rudy was right. We were WAY ahead of schedule as the kids were going so fast today. So, we got Jack up and continued along (a simple "let's go" will get Jack right up and ready to run again :) We continued on along the perfect groomed trail, now the Turkey Creek Trail, and skijored farther than Jack & Rudy have ever been on this terrain. It gets so pretty when you get far back along Turkey Creek into the wilderness. Check out this pretty photo:

The kids catching air with cool snow poofs behind them.
Now look up at the gorgeous Rocky Mountain scenery you get from
this section of trail. Such a beautiful morning!

Come along for the video counterpart to the prior photo. This is the first time young Jack & Rudy have ever been on this "far back" stretch of Turkey Creek. New trail, same results - zoom, zoom, zoom. What fun partners!

[watch on youtube if no video loads below]

Despite the perfect and untouched backside of Shrine Pass, eventually we had to come back :) Here we are back on the busier frontside of Shrine Pass still running fast to the finish of a 10+ mile skijor:

Catching air again, this time on the busy frontside of Shrine Pass.

What an incredible morning, right guys?

"So much fun!" replies happy Jack.
"Zoom, zoom!" adds 'king of the mountain' Rudy :)

A beautiful 10.6 miles traveled with 1200 feet of elevation climbed and a top speed of 23 MPH.

2022/2023 Season to Date: 77 days on the trails covering 669.1 miles with 60,500 feet of elevation climbed.

 

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