Almost

Fun "shot from the front" of the happy kids towing me to the finish of this morning's skijor.

Smiles all around. Wheeee!

Our hope for this morning's skijor was to find a solid spring crust around the base of Walton Peak. This is a frequent thing we do in April & May when the solid crust can hold Jack, Rudy and I so we can abandon set trails and fly across vast open meadows.

That was the hope. What was the result? Well, mixed results...

A perfect stretch of spring crust able to support fast running Jack & Rudy.

The prior photo was the "success photo". But, unfortunately, we encountered many stretches where the crust was very weak. It could support Jack & Rudy doing a gentle trot or jog but could not support the downward force they exert running fast. So, we had to go slowly on long stretches so as not to punch through the crust. At one point, the crust got very soft. I was about to abort this direction and turn around when I noticed a snowmobile track going down the center of the meadow. Certainly this track could support Jack & Rudy. The downside though, was the track was frozen and icy in the middle - too hard for me to ski in. The solution? Put Jack & Rudy "in track" and me "on crust" to continue along (the crust could support me on skis but not fast running Jack & Rudy):

What an unusual shot. Jack & Rudy "in track" with me
"out of track" on the crust (you can see my left ski while the right
is further out of view).

With only mixed results on the crust, we headed back to the main, well-packed snowmobile trail:

Catching air with a little bit of groomer corduroy for me along the
right shoulder of the trail.

We stuck to the main trail all the way back to the trailhead. Come along for today's "strong to the finish" video clip as we are on the final stretch of this morning's 9 mile outing. Watch impressive Jack & Rudy running just as hard at the finish as they do at the start!

[watch on youtube if no video loads below]

It may not have been the solid crust we were hoping for, but it is still "toes on snow", right guys:

"Great snow to roll angels!" demonstrates Jack.
"I LOVE SNOW!" belts wooing Rudy.
Notice by the shadow, you can tell Rudy's woo is directed directly
at me. Silly kid.

Finally, time for end of run treats and the kids found another snow wall to climb to get face to face with standing me. Funny kids.

"Ready, you have our complete attention!" declares the high standing kids.

An unfortunate "mixed results" in the search for a spring crust, but still a ton of fun: 9 miles traveled with 700 feet of elevation climbed and a top speed of 21 MPH.

2022/2023 Season to Date: 131 days on the trails covering 1168.0 miles with 106,000 feet of elevation climbed.