Boreas

Our first skijor up & down Boreas Pass this morning. Yay for Boreas!

Jack & Rudy cruising along as we approach the historic Baker's Tank
left over from when Boreas Pass Road was the railroad into Breckenridge.

Boreas is a very fun trail to skijor. But, it is open to vehicles (for hunting season) until around Thanksgiving. As a result, you have to get on Boreas immediately after fresh snow to enjoy it before it gets tracked up by vehicles. As expected, the snow cover was pretty thin but good enough to ski gently. Smart Jack & Rudy understood the conditions are remained in a gentle jog to light trot all outing long. Occasionally we could open up the speed a little bit, but not for long before returning to a gentle jog.

One nice stretch as we open up the throttle a little bit.

Most of the outing, though, was spent as you see in the following video: a gentle jog by Jack & Rudy as they tow me along in thin snow cover. The super smart guys knew to never try and floor it, the conditions were a jog to trot outing :)

[watch on youtube if no video loads below]

Along the way we passed by a large meadow where we have seen moose many times. Jack & Rudy had to stop and survey for moose. We never saw any but I could tell by the movement of their noses that the scent of moose was in the air!

"Sniff, sniff - we smell you! Where are you?!?!" asks the moose patrol.

After going up Boreas for a little over 4 miles, it was time to turnaround and head back down. Today's turnaround comedy was the usual snow angels from Jack and woos from Rudy this morning:

"Rub a dub dub!" goes snow rolling Jack.
"WOO! Finally back on Boreas!" belts wooing Rudy.

Finally, back to the trailhead and Jack & Rudy found a snow wall to climb for end of run treats. They started doing this last season and have been waiting for enough snow to collect for wall climbing this season!

"We'll come up to you for the treats!" says the polite gentleman letting
me stand instead of kneel to hand out treats!

A fun first run of the season on Boreas albeit a bit of a thin cover/cautious outing: 8.2 miles traveled with 800 feet of elevation climbed and a modest top speed of 17 MPH.

2023/2024 Season to Date: 15 days on the trails covering 118.3 miles with 11,900 feet of elevation climbed.