Saturday, April 1, 2023

Close Encounter of the Moose Kind

Look who is blocking the trail AGAIN!!!

"Hey, no stopping on the trail!" yells Rudy.
"Yeah, RUDE!" adds Jack.

These are the same two moose who where blocking the trail in this EXACT same location 48 hours ago. Now here's the thing, it is rare to unheard of to encounter moose at the same place 48 hours apart. The big animals wander through large spaces to forage in the forest. They already picked the trees in this location clean 48 hours ago, so what are they doing back? So much for "unheard of"...

Today was probably the scariest moment I've ever had on skis, brought to you by these "shouldn't even be here" moose. We were skijoring along, minding our own business, when suddenly the mother moose SHOT out of the forest onto the trail in front of us. Holy smokes!

Big ass moose jumping out from the trees to cut us off.
Pun intended (big ass :)

Come along for the slow motion video of this ridiculously wild moose encounter. As I said above, we are skijoring along, minding our own business, when suddenly the MOOSE pops out of the forest onto the trail and takes off in front of us. I immediately throw my body to the ground to stop everyone. My full body is the best brake I have on this skijoring machine :) My goodness, cutoff by a MOOSE! Whoa!

[watch on youtube if no video loads below]

After collecting myself from this ridiculous cutoff, I got up to see where the moose went. Well, she ran down trail to collect her kid. So, here we were again blocked from proceeding by two moose. A lady we had passed earlier eventually caught up to us stopped for the moose. We all studied the moose trying to figure out how to get them to move.

Rudy screaming at the 2 moose as we all ponder what to do next.

This lady became our new friend for a while. As she and I were discussing the moose with Rudy screaming at them in the background, she eventually said, "I'm surprised they don't leave due to him [Rudy] screaming like that!" I agreed, but Rudy wasn't moving them. 

Here's a zoomed in shot of the two trail hogs.

Mom on the right, kid on the left.
Make note of that bush in front of the kid.

What did we do? Well, Jack, Rudy, myself and our new skier friend skied back up trail to give the moose time to leave. We'd ski a little ways and then one of us would ski back to see if the moose were gone. The moose were moving down trail, but VERY slowly, snacking along the way. Each time we reverified the moose were still in the way, the 4 of us would reverse and go back up trail for a bit. Along the way, Jack & Rudy decided to inspect all the places the moose had snacked. Remember the bush next to the kid in the prior photo? Well, here it is up close...

"Sniff, sniff - juvenile moose slobber on this bush!" declares Jack sniffing
the bush that the kid was snacking on in the prior photo.

Not to be outdone, Rudy found where the mother shot out of the forest when cutting us off.

"Sniff, sniff  - big mama slobber! Even better than kid slobber!" declares
Rudy inspecting the bush the mother was apparently eating before shooting
out of the forest in front of us.

Our new group of 4 tried to get past the moose 6 times, each time going a little further on the trail but still running into the moose eventually. On attempt #7, we finally got clearance! Our new friend is pointing out where the two moose are FINALLY off trail. Of course, Jack & Rudy already alerted me to their location; but still nice of her to point it out.

"Thanks for pointing, but we are already ON it!" says the moose spotters,
Jack & Rudy.

Finally clear and it is back to the trailhead for some much deserved end of run treats!

Given the situation - being cutoff by a moose, Jack & Rudy were incredibly
good today listening to me and turning around 6 times due to moose
blocking the trail!

Yowza, what were those two moose doing in the same location 48 hours apart?!?! Unheard of!!! Anyway, 11.2 miles traveled with a top speed of 24 MPH and 800 feet of elevation climbed.

2022/2023 Season to Date: 123 days on the trails covering 1096.0 miles with 99,500 feet of elevation climbed.


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