Moose

Cruising by the historic Sallie Barber Mine on this morning's skijor. 

On by we go.... Wheeee!

We had what began as a very peaceful skijor at Sallie Barber Mine this morning. There was a couple of inches of new snow with a couple of pre-existing ski tracks on the popular frontside of the mine and no existing tracks on the less popular backside of the mine. We skijored up the frontside, then down & back up the backside and finally back down the frontside. 

The backside has some fun dips & lifts along the trail where Jack & Rudy rise above my waist height as they go up a lift before me. This makes for some cool photos:

Jack & Rudy higher than my waist as they crest over a little lift in the trail
before I do.

For today's video highlight, we'll show one of our favorite stretches of trail on the frontside of the mine. Come along as we start in a straight section of trail. Then we get to dip into a sharp left, glide around a gentle right and finally really open the throttle in an extended straightaway. Zoom!

[watch on youtube if no video loads below]

As we were nearing the end of what was a "peaceful skijor" all moose broke out :) As we came upon a corner near the end of the outing, Jack & Rudy stopped suddenly and low & behold there was a moose laying right off the trail! We had been by this corner just 40ish minutes earlier and there was no moose! I thought this was a pretty big moose at first, little did I know...

Jack & Rudy locked on the moose laying down just feet off the trail. Yikes!

I quickly got Jack & Rudy under control and moved backwards to get a safe distance away before deciding how we were going to avoid this moose and still get around the corner. Well, as I was backing the kids up, Rudy let out one of his patented "moose screams". The scream caused the moose to stand. As I was watching the large creature stand, suddenly another moose arose from the other side of the tree. Much to my amazement, the original moose was actually a kid and the second (that I did not see at first) was the mother who stood to tower over the kid. I continued moving Jack & Rudy back until we were at a safe distance. Meanwhile, the mother meandered over next to her kid while we all decided what to do with each other :)

Mother and kid standing with mother slightly behind the kid!

Not convinced there are two moose the prior photo? Ok, let's zoom in as much as I can before the photo gets too blurry:

You can now make out at least 6 separate legs. Yep, 2 moose.
Oh, 4 very interested husky ears too :)

What happened? Well, Rudy saved the day. He belted out another round of moose screams and the mother got sick of listening to him and gathered her kid and sauntered off into the trees away from us. Of course, Rudy didn't want the moose to leave; but luckily he cannot keep his mouth shut and the moose did not want to listen to him :)

Moose out of the way, time to safely get back to the trailhead to share our usual end of run treats:

"Got any moose meat in that bag?" asks the curious kids.
Sorry guys, no moose in here, just the usual pork treats!

A peaceful quick run around Sallie Barber this morning with an exhilarating moose encounter to end the day: 7.2 miles traveled with 600 feet of elevation climbed and a top speed of 22 MPH.

2022/2023 Season to Date: 83 days on the trails covering 722.6 miles with 66,450 feet of elevation climbed.