Sun Snow

Fun shot from the front as happy Jack & Rudy tow me to the finish of this morning's skijor!

11 miles later and all smiles from the happy kids!

Today's outing found us going to Vail Pass and conditions could not have been any better. The trail groomer had run a few hours before we arrived and then a light layer of new snow fell on top the freshly groomed trail. Finally, nobody had been out on the trail in between the groom and the new snow. Laying fresh tracks on top of a newly groomed trail - fantastic!

Tread track from the snowcat groomer to our left.
Untouched & perfect trail in front of us!

The further we went, the deeper the new snow got. Never very deep, but an inch or so of fresh snow at our highest/deepest point. 

Cool footprints and snow poofs behind fast running Jack & Rudy.

With such perfect conditions, the kids were really into today's outing! Ok, they are ALWAYS into every skijor outing; but they were into running extra fast & hard today. All that work means you need to hop off trail into the deep snow to cool your jets at our turnaround midpoint of the outing:

Funny kids rolling in the deep snow off trail.
Notice each is giving himself a snow facial too :)

We went out and back the same route this morning. To our pleasure and surprise, only a single snowmobile had made it out on the trails between the time we started and ended the outing. So, there was still plenty of fresh snow outside the snowmobile track to run in. Wheeee!

Snowmobile track to our left, fresh snow in front of us! Yay!

Today's video highlight goes along with the prior photo. Come along and watch us having fun skijoring the Shrine Pass Trail near the end of our outing.  If you can take your eyes off Jack & Rudy, notice that despite sun & shadows it is snowing too (very lightly, but snowing). A rare occurrence: Sun Snow :)

[watch on youtube if no video loads below]

Back to the trailhead and the kids love to climb the snow walls in the Vail Pass parking lot for end of run treats (they do this every visit to Vail Pass :)

Not often I can stand and be face to face with my fun pals :)

A really perfect outing at Vail Pass this morning: 11 miles traveled with 1100 feet of elevation climbed and a top speed of 22 MPH.

2022/2023 Season to Date: 99 days on the trails covering 873.0 miles with 80,300 feet of elevation climbed.