All Terrain

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

"Whee! We had a blast today!" says the happy kids.

After meeting up with the groomer from Gold Run Nordic Center yesterday, we decided to go back to the same area this morning knowing we'd eventually connect onto the fast & groomed nordic terrain. But, we do not start on the nordic trails, instead we start in the backcountry and maneuver through the forest before eventually meeting up with the nordic center. As a result, it was an all terrain day for us on the trails!

We started on set backcountry trails. We actually set this track in the snow yesterday and could see that others had used it to pack it a bit more the last 24 hours.

Getting "shoulder to shoulder tight" to fit in the set backcountry trail.

Next we wanted to work our way from the backcountry towards the nordic center trails. There are lots of options to do this connection. Today we chose one of the lesser used connectors and found ourselves breaking trail in about 18 inches of powder for a short distance. Fun!

Look at the deep snow troughs behind Jack & Rudy as they power to
tow me through about 18 inches of powder!

Eventually we connected onto the nordic center trails. We were a bit surprised to see that the groomer had run as a snowcat (i.e,. groomer blades up) to pack the upper elevation trails. I'm not sure why they kept the groomer blade up for this stretch; but we have fun running in cat tracks as well!

Zipping along in snowcat tracks. Wheeee!

Finally we got onto the main nordic trail to end the outing. As expected, this stretch was groomed and fast!

Zoom! Jack & Rudy know how to make use of a groomed nordic surface!

For today's video highlight, let's return to the backcountry trails where we started the morning. Come along for a little backcountry skijor fun. Note how Jack & Rudy really kick it into another gear about 14 seconds into this clip. Zoom!

[watch on youtube if no video loads below]

To complete the "all terrain day", it was a nice snow wall to climb for end of run treats at the trailhead.

"Ready! Hand 'em out!" says the snow wall climbing fun guys.

A little of everything today: backcountry skijoring, breaking trail, snowcat tracks and finally a groomie zoomie to end the day: 9.1 miles traveled with 900 feet of elevation climbed and a top speed of 22 MPH.

2023/2024 Season to Date: 30 days on the trails covering 245.5 miles with 23,500 feet of elevation climbed.